.COMTE    AND    MILL 


By 
THOMAS   WHITTAKER 

AUTHOR  OF 
*  THE  NEO-PLATONISTS,'  *  THE  LIBERAL  STATE,'  ETC. 


NEW    YORK 
DODGE   PUBLISHING   COMPANY 

214-220    EAST    23RD    STREET 


BZZi^Z 


)10CI 


M^1 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  Antecedents, 1 

11,  Comte's  First  Phase,         .        .        .        .        .  9 

III.  The  Positive  Philosophy,         ....  18 

IT.  Mill's  Logic  and  Metaphysics,       ...  33 

V.  The  Religion  of  Humanity,     ....  46 

— VL  Mill's  Politics,  Economics,  and  Ethics,        .  60 

VII.  The  Essays  on  Religion, 75 

VIII,  Aspects  of  Later  Thought,     ....  81 

Selected  Works, 92 


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COMTE   AND    MILL 
CHAPTER  I 

ANTECEDENTS 

The  two  thinkers  who  have  been  brought  together 
as  the  subjects  of  this  volume  spring  out  of  what 
is  broadly  the  same  movement  of  modern  thought. 
If  within  it  they  are  in  some  respects  antithetic, 
this  makes  them  all  the  better  adapted  for 
simultaneous  treatment.  Both,  on  the  intellec- 
tual side,  were  adherents  of  the  philosophy  called 
in  general  experiential ;  and  with  both  alike  the 
whole  effort  of  thought  was  inspired  by  a  social  aim. 
The  difference  is  that  by  the  younger  of  the  two 
the  experience  regarded  as  the  ground  of  know- 
ledge was  supposed  to  be  explicable  by  impressions 
on  the  individual  mind;  whereas  the  elder  had7 
transcended  'individualism'  in  this  sense,  andr 
conceived  of  knowledge  as  fundamentally  a  social} 
product.  For  Mill,  the  individual  human  being 
is  a  component  of  society  known  prior  to  the 
composition.     For  Comte,  he  cannot  be  known  as 

A  I 


COMTE  AND   MILL 

human  except  in  relation  to  it,  and  can  only  be 
thought  of  apart  from  it  by  abstraction. 

This  change  of  view  is  often  said  to  characterise 
the  advance  made  by  the  nineteenth  century  on 
the  eighteenth.  Because  Mill  had  not  appreciated 
this  advance,  it  is  sometimes  said  that  he  ought 
to  be  classed  as  still  belonging  in  spirit  to  the 
eighteenth  century.  Comte,  in  this  resembling 
Hegel  in  spite  of  his  very  different  general 
philosophy,  was  one  of  those  who  had  most 
unquestionably  made  the  new  point  of  view  their 
own.  At  first  sight  therefore  he  might  appear 
to  have  all  the  advantage  over  his  younger  con- 
temporary. This  impression,  however,  Avould  be 
wrong.  The  whole  value  of  a  philosopher's 
thought  cannot  be  tested  by  any  single  point  of 
view ;  and  there  were  lines  on  which  Mill,  though 
not  so  systematic  and  powerful  a  thinker  all 
round,  went  deeper  and  achieved  more  than 
Comte 

There  is  not  space  to  say  much  of  the  biography 
of  either;  but  the  leading  facts  must  be  given. 
Auguste  Comte  ^vas  born  at  Montpellier  on  the 
19th  January  1798,  and  died  at  Paris  on  the 
5th  September  1857.  John  Stuart  Mill  was  born 
at  Pentonville  on  the  20th  May  1806,  and  died  at 
Avignon  on  the  8th  May  1873.     Comte's  system- 


ANTECEDENTS 

atic  training  was  in  mathematical  and  physical 
science;  first  at  the  Lycee  of  Montpellier  and 
afterwards  at  the  Ecole  Poly  technique  in  Paris. 
In  youth  he  also  accumulated  extensive  know- 
ledge of  history  and  literature,  and  an  extremely 
tenacious  memory  gave  him  ever  afterwards  full 
command  of  his  material.  Henceforth,  however, 
he  only  elaborated  and  did  not  add  to  the  store. 
His  later  abstinence  from  the  reading  of  contem- 
porary literature  and  journalism  h6  described  as 
*  cerebral  hygiene.'  The  greater  part  of  his  life 
(1816  to  1851)  was  more  or  less  absorbed  by  the 
private  teaching  of  mathematics  and  by  the 
duties  of  posts  as  public  teacher  and  examiner. 
What  he  always  regarded  as  his  distinctive  work 
had  to  be  done  in  the  intervals  of  obligatory 
tasks;  till  at  length,  having  been  deprived  first 
of  one  post  and  then  of  another  through  the 
hostility  of  scientific  specialists  whom  he  had 
failed  to  conciliate  either  for  his  philosophy  or 
for  himself  personally,  he  was  supported,  in 
further  developing  his  doctrine,  by  the  subsidies 
of  disciples  and  sympathisers.  In  one  respect 
Miir^  external  circumstances  were  similar.  He 
too  was  never  a  teacher  of  philosophy,  but  had 
duties  extrinsic  to  the  purpose  of  his  life  as  he 
had  been  led  to  conceive  it  from  the  first.     A 

3 


COMTE  AND   MILL 

severe  and  elaborate  education  by  his  fiither, 
James  Mill  (1773-1836),  in  ancient  literature,  in 
mathematics,  and  especially  in  logic,  was  followed 
by  an  official  career  in  the  service  of  the  East 
India  Company,  v/hich  lasted  from  1823  to  1858, 
when  the  government  of  India  was  transferred  to 
the  Crown.  His  education,  it  may  be  observed, 
was  in  a  manner  complementary  to  that  of  the 
Polytechnic  student.  Physical  science  was  a  study 
in  which  Mill  was  not  directly  trained,  but  in  which 
he  eagerly  sought  information  for  himself.  For 
his  actual  work  this  was  not  the  least  important 
part  of  his  preparation;  as,  similarly,  Comte's 
historical  reading  was  not  the  least  important 
part  of  his. 

To  Comte  the  impulse  towards  the  philosophic 
work  of  his  life  came  at  once  from  the  thinkers 
who,  before  the  French  Revolution,  had  speculated 
with  conscious  regard  to  the  better  ordering  of 
society,  and  from  those  who,  after  the  Restoration, 
were  aiming  at  social  reconstruction  either  by  a 
continuance  of  the  revolutionary  movement  or  by 
a  return  to  the  past.  The  names  he  has  himself 
selected  from  his  nearest  precursors  are  those  of 
Condorcet  and  of  Joseph  de  Maistre.  From  the 
former  he  took  the  idea  that  the  total  movement 
of  history  is  progressive;   but,  precisely  as   the 

4 


ANTECEDENTS 

consequence  of  this  idea,  found  him  in  detail  of 
little  value  because,  with  the  eighteenth  century 
generally,  he  had  nothing  but  condemnation  for 
the  Middle  Ages.  From  the  latter  he  took  the 
vindication  of  the  mediaeval  order  and  of  its  culmin- 
ation in  the  papacy,  but  only,  as  he  says,  relatively 
to  the  stage  then  reached  by  the  European  mind. 
Condorcet  had  failed  to  recognise  the  *  relative ' 
justification  of  the  past.  De  Maistre,  in  accord- 
ance with  the  old  theological  philosophy,  held  its 
justification  to  be  '  absolute.'  A  sound  philosophy,  . ; 
emancipated  equally  from  theological  and  anti- 
theological  prejudices,  and  regarding  every  order 
relatively  to  its  own  conditions,  and  not  as 
absolutely  good  or  bad,  will  move  towards  a 
synthesis  under  which  the  provisional  value  of 
both  views  alike  can  be  recognised.  This  synthesis, 
to  which  the  most  advanced  minds  are  tending, 
is  declared  to  be  itself  pre-eminently  '  relative ' ; 
not  merely  because  it  too  belongs  only  to  one 
stage — though  the  final  stage — of  the  human 
race,  but  also  for  reasons  that  we  shall  meet  with  "'^ 
later. 

Comte's   aim   was   thus   to   be   a   reformer   of  ) 
thought  for  the  sake  of  action.     This  was  also  j 
Mill's  aim,  directly  impressed  by  his  father,  who 
preceded  him  as  a  thinker  and   worker  for  the 

S 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

cause  of  political  and  social  reform  in  England. 
A  disciple  of  Jeremy  Bentham,  James  Mill  indoc- 
trinated his  son  with  the  principles  of  utilitarian 
ethics  and  jurisprudence  as  they  were  understood 
in  Bentham's  school.  To  these  he  added  a  train- 
ing in  the  English  psychology  of  Association  as 
developed  especially  by  Hartley.  The  works  of 
the  Scottish  school  of  Common  Sense  were  also 
read,  but  with  a  view  to  their  correction  and 
development  on  Associationist  principles.  For 
the  merely  verbal  explanation  of  cohesions  of 
feeling  in  consciousness  by  *  mental  faculties/ 
called  Memory  or  Imagination  or  Reason,  different 
for  each  kind  of  product,  was  to  be  substituted 
the  explanation  of  them  in  common  by  laws  of 
grouping  or  'association  of  ideas,'  yielding 
different  results  according  to  the  nature  of  the 
elements  associated  and  their  degree  of  com- 
plication. This  doctrine  James  Mill  himself 
worked  out,  in  his  Analysis  of  the  Phenomena  of 
the  Human  Mind  (1829),  to  explain  the  appear- 
ance of  necessity  in  mental  judgments  that 
present  themselves  as  axioms.  The  psychological 
origin  of  this  appearance,  he  tried  to  show,  is 
the  '  inseparable  association '  of  mental  states  that 
have  been  constantly  conjoined  in  past  experience. 
From  this  theory  there  resulted,  in  the  view  he 

6 


ANTECEDENTS 

passed  on  to  his  son,  an  almost  unlimited  power 
of  education,  by  modifying  the  associations  formed, 
to  change  men's  modes  of  thinking  and  feeling. 
Associationist  psychology  was  not  a  part  of 
Bentham's  own  doctrine,  but  was  added  to  it  by 
his  disciple.  Again,  though  great  in  legislation, 
Bentham  was  found  inadequate  in  pure  politics. 
For  a  new  starting-point  Hobbes  was  recurred  to ; 
but,  instead  of  absolute  monarchy,  representative 
democracy  was  held  to  be  the  best  form  of  the 
State.  This  position  was  laid  down  in  James 
Mill's  article  on  *  Government,'  contributed  in  1820 
to  a  supplement  of  the  Encyclopcedia  Britannica. 
Beyond  the  theories  of  government  and  legisla- 
tion, the  social  science  chiefly  studied  was 
Political  Economy.  The  most  recent  authorities 
here  were  Ricardo  and  Malthus.  Ricardo  was  a 
personal  friend  of  James  Mill,  who  had  first 
encouraged  him  to  express  his  views  in  writing. 
By  Malthus's  4aw  of  population,'  J.  S.  Mill's 
social  theories  were  afterwards  deeply  influenced. 
He  and  Comte  started  in  effect  equally  clear 
of  theology  from  boyhood.  Comte  indeed  was 
brought  up  as  a  Catholic  ;  but  he  was  thrown  at 
school  (from  his  tenth  year)  into  the  intellectual 
atmosphere  of  post-revolutionary  France ;  and  he 
himself  relates  that  at  thirteen  he  had  rejected 

7 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

all  historic  religion,  including  theism.  James 
Mill  brought  up  his  son  in  the  conviction  that 
'  concerning  the  origin  of  things  nothing  whatever 
can  be  known/  Christianity,  he  held  with  the 
school  of  Bentham  in  general,  is  not  only  false 
but  pernicious,  the  God  of  orthodoxy  being  *  the 
most  perfect  conception  of  wickedness  which  the 
human  mind  can  devise/  By  Bishop  Butler  he 
had  been  convinced  that  the  attempt  to  argue 
from  the  natural  order  to  a  benevolent  Creator 
breaks  down,  since  the  moral  difficulties  of  the 
Christian  revelation  have  their  analogy  in  the 
ordinary  course  of  nature.  But,  as  J.  S.  Mill 
observes,  during  the  period  in  which  he  grew  up, 
opinion  in  England  on  religion  was  more  com- 
pressed than  it  has  been  earlier  or  later.  If  the 
Utilitarians  were  not  to  throw  away  all  chance  of 
influence,  they  must  observe  a  rule  of  strict 
reticence  in  public ;  though  as  a  matter  of  fact 
their  real  opinions  were  well  understood.  Comte 
was  more  fortunately  situated  in  this  respect. 
Even  under  the  restored  monarchy  he  could 
speak  as  he  liked  in  lectures  as  in  writing ;  and 
he  never  left  any  doubt  that  he  regarded  every 
form  of  theology,  including  the  Christian,  as 
superseded,  to  use  his  own  expression,  for  all 
minds  at  the  level  of  their  age. 

8 


CHAPTER  II 

comte's  first  phase 

For  a  very  short  time  Comte  classed  himself, 
along  with  others  who  aimed  at  continuing  the 
work  of  the  revolutionists  against  the  reaction, 
simply  as  a  political  liberal.  This  youthful  stage 
is  just  perceptible  in  his  earliest  correspondence; 
but  it  was  not  long  before  another  side  of  his 
mind  responded  to  the  influences  of  the  counter- 
revolution. As  in  the  case  of  Hegel,  personal 
circumstances  had  little  or  nothing  to  do  with 
this.  The  conservative  element  in  Hegel's  mind 
is  clearly  marked  in  his  first  great  work,  written 
before  he  occupied  any  official  position.  So 
Comte,  making  the  transition  with  more  pre- 
cocity from  his  early  revolutionary  enthusiasm, 
expressed  to  his  friend  Valat  his  sense  of  the 
relative  justification  of  the  party  that  was  con- 
tent if  it  could  preserve  order  against  anarchy. 
The  revolutionary  party,  he  found,  had  no  con- 

9 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

structive  plan.  The  destructive  work  of  the 
eighteenth  century  had  now  been  sufficiently 
accomplished.  A  new  synthesis  must  be  thought 
out  before  any  further  direct  action  ought  to  be 
undertaken.  When  this  was  adequately  devel- 
oped, it  would  be  found  to  supersede  mere 
'  negativism,'  or  revolutionary  liberalism  and  free 
thought,  as  well  as  the  old  theology,  by  a  pro- 
gramme whicli  the  conservative  party  or  its 
dictators,  no  longer  fearing  social  dissolution, 
would  see  the  wisdom  of  accepting  at  the  hands 
of  '  positive '  thinkers. 

In    his    quest    of   constructive    ideas    Comte 
thought    at    first   that   he  had   found   what    he 
desired  in  the  social  projects  of  Henri  de  Saint- 
Simon  (1760-1825),   with   whom   he   came   into 
contact  in  1818.     Saint-Simon  is  a  characteristic 
figure  of  the  transition  from  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury to  the  nineteenth.     A  noble  of  reforming 
aspirations,  he  had  with  varied  success  devoted 
himself  to  finance  in  order  to  acquire  the  means 
of  procuring  assistance  in  elaborating  the  schemes 
evolved  in  his  fertile  but  theoretically  untrained 
f   mind.     Comte,  with  his  encyclopaedic  training  in 
?   the  sciences,  presented   himself   as   exactly  the 
^    assistant  he  required;    and   the   connection  be- 
tween them  lasted  for  seven  years.     From  Saint- 

lO 


COMTE'S  FJRST   PHASE 

Simon  Comte  undoubtedly  first  took  up  some 
of  the  phrases  and  modes  of  thought  that  were 
his  own  starting-points.  Among  these  was,  for 
example,  the  antithesis  between  *  organic'  and 
'  critical '  periods,  the  Middle  Ages  being  regarded 
as  organic  and  the  eighteenth  century  as  critical. 
The  general  name  given  by  Saint-Simon  to  his 
conception  of  the  new  social  order  was  'indus- 
trialism/ Industrial  capacity  is  to  hold  in 
modern  life  the  place  that  military  capacity  held 
in  the  Middle  Ages.  The  practical  direction  is 
now  to  pass  from  feudal  nobles  to  industrial 
chiefs.  In  the  new  'organic'  period  there  will 
be  a  new  '  spiritual  power '  corresponding  to  the 
mediaeval  Church.  For  the  clergy  will  be  sub- 
stituted men  of  science,  artists,  and  generally  the 
theoretical  as  distinguished  from  the  practical 
class.  The  spiritual  power,  however,  is  to  be 
strictly  subsidiary.  The  aim  of  society  is  'pro- 
duction '  in  its  industrial  sense,  and  the  practical 
chiefs  are  the  supreme  directors  and  judges.  To 
them  belongs  the  selection  of  the  doctrines  to 
be  taught. 

Comte  for  a  time  called  himself  a  Saint- 
Simonian,  and  worked  out  the  new  ideas  in 
papers  of  which  he  did  not  claim  the  authorship. 
One  of  these,  dated  1820,  and  entitled  '  Sommaire 

II 


COMTE   AND    MILL 

appreciation  de  Tensemble  du  passe  moderne,'  is 
reprinted  in  the  series  of  'opuscules'  appended 
to  the  last  volume  of  the  Systeme  de  Politique 
Positive.  Comte  himself,  in  the  preface  to  the 
*  opuscules/  notes  two  points  in  this  as  original : 
first,  the  separation  of  the  destructive  and  recon- 
structive, or  '  negative '  and  '  positive,'  movements 
that  have  been  the  components  of  the  'Occi- 
dental revolution'  since  the  eleventh  century; 
and,  secondly,  the  contrast  drawn  between  France 
and  England  according  as  the  'central'  or  the 
'local'  power  gained  the  predominance.  The 
two  antithetic  movements,  he  concluded,  have 
been  everywhere  simultaneous;  but  in  France 
the  old  'temporal  power'  was  prepared  for  final 
supersession  by  a  provisional  predominance  of 
the  monarchy  in  alliance  with  the  commons, 
while  in  England  the  commons  allied  with  the 
aristocracy  reduced  the  monarchy  to  a  position 
subordinate  to  the  latter.  For  the  rest,  this  paper 
is  not  otherwise  original,  being  in  the  main  simply 
a  glorification  of  the  joint  triumphs  achieved  or 
to  be  achieved  by  the  spontaneous  progress  of 
science  and  industry.  Comte  had  not  yet  seized 
his  own  problem. 

The  break  between  the  master  and  the  pupil 
came  with  the  next  paper,  dated  1822,  and  now 

12 


COMTE'S  FIRST   PHASE 

entitled  'Plan  des  travaux  scientifiques  ne- 
cessaires  pour  reorganiser  la  societe/  In  that 
year  only  a  few  copies  were  distributed.  The 
short  treatise  was  not  effectively  published  till 
1824,  when  Saint-Simon  repudiated  Comte's 
distinctive  views.  It  then  bore  the  title  '  Systeme 
de  Politique  Positive/  thus  anticipating  the  title, 
as  Avell  as  the  ideas,  of  the  later  great  '  Treatise 
on  Sociology '  now  known  by  that  name.  The 
point  of  difference  was  that,  according  to  Comte, 
the  work  of  the  theoretical  class  must  come  first 
and  give  the  direction  for  the  new  social  order ; 
whereas,  according  to  Saint-Simon,  'industrial 
capacity '  is  in  the  first  line,  and  all  else  is  to 
work  for  its  advantage.  Also,  Saint-Simon  found 
that  Comte  had  not  developed  the  '  sentimental 
and  religious '  part  of  his  system.  This  will  not 
seem  surprising  when  we  know  that  the  name 
given  to  the  religious  doctrine  was  'Neo- 
Christianity.'  By  his  successors  this  was  put 
forward  as  the  consecration  of  the  socialistic  side 
of  his  teaching,  which  they  carried  further.  For 
Saint-Simon,  while  his  practical  scheme  is 
essentially  a  kind  of  benevolent  capitalism,  has 
a  place  among  the  precursors  of  socialism  in  so 
far  as  he  proposes  to  abolish  the  inheritance  and 
bequest  of  property,  and  to  substitute  a  selection 

13 


COMTE  AND   MILL 

of  industrial  aptitudes  by  the  community  or  its 
chiefs.  Here  it  would  be  easy  to  find  relations 
with  Comte's  ideal  polity;  but  Saint-Simon  is 
admittedly  incoherent,  and  his  immense  projects 
were  never  systematically  worked  out.  Now  the 
last  thing  of  which  Comte  can  be  accused  is 
incoherence.  Even  the  mechanism  of  his  system 
is  all  there  to  be  criticised  in  detail.  It  was  not 
strange,  though  it  Avas  regrettable,  that  he  should 
afterwards  repudiate  any  obligation  to  Saint- 
Simon.  The  connection,  he  declared  at  last,  had 
only  fettered  the  course  of  his  spontaneous 
meditations. 

The  early  Politique  Positive  is  certainly  an 
astonishing  work.  At  the  age  of  twenty- four, 
Comte  appears  already  as  a  master,  clearly  in 
possession  of  the  central  ideas  of  his  system. 
Here  was  originally  formulated  his  '  law  of^JJie 
three. states/  Of  this  his  disciple  Littre,  who 
became  a  dissentient  from  his  later  doctrine,  and 
thus  fulfils  the  condition  of  impartiality,  has 
failed  to  find  any  trace  in  Saint-Simon.  As  a 
separate  thought  it  is  anticipated  in  a  passage  he 
has  brought  to  light  from  Turgot ;  but  the  idea, 
as  he  points  out,  was  by  Turgot  left  quite  un- 
developed. In  Comte  it  is  undoubtedly  inde- 
pendent, and  by  him  first  it  was  made  the  basis 
14 


COMTE'S   FIRST  PHASE 

of  sociology  conceived  as  a  positive  science.  The^, 
general  idea  is  that  the  human  mind  first 
explains  the  course  of  nature  by  '  theological ' 
fictions,  in  which  objects  are  imagined  to  be 
moved  by  a  quasi-human  will;  these  are  then 
reduced  to  depersonalised  abstractions,  or  '  meta- 
physical' entities;  finally,  every  attempt  is 
renounced  to  go  behind  the  '  positive '  or  scientific 
law  of  the  successions  and  resemblances  of 
phenomena.  This  formula  having  been  arrived 
at  historically,  society  itself  becomes  the  subject- 
matter  of  a  positive  science.  For  the  character- 
istic of  social  phenomena,  in  distinction  from  all 
others,  is  the  peculiar  kind  of  continuity  that 
unites  the  historical  past  with  the  present  and 
the  future ;  and  the  formula  of  this  is  the  law  of 
the  three  states,  now  discovered.  Social  science, 
as  it  develops,  will,  like  the  other  sciences 
(astronomy,  for  instance),  be  made  the  ground  of 
prevision.  The  thinkers  who  work  out  this  new 
science  will  be  able  to  show  that  a  certain  type 
of  social  order  is  in  the  future  inevitable,  as  the 
past  stages  have  been  in  their  time.  Its  advent 
can  indeed  be  retarded  by  want  of  insight,  but 
that  is  all.  Nothing  can  prevent  its  final  realisa- 
tion. By  showing  this,  the  insight  of  theorists 
may  cause   many  otherwise   inevitable    revolu- 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

tionary  disturbances  to  be  avoided  on  the  way. 
The  final  movement,  Comte  holds,  is  towards 
supersession  of  a  theologico-military  by  a  scientific 
industrial  order.  The  intermediate  system,  in 
which  metaphysicians  and  jurists  took  the  lead 
as  respectively  the  theoretical  and  practical 
directors,  is  merely  transitional.  Men  of  science, 
when  science  has  been  systematised  and  unified 
under  a  positive  conception,  will  form  the 
spiritual  powder.  The  temporal  power  will  be 
that  of  the  industrial  directors,  by  *  industry' 
being  understood  in  general  the  action  of  man 
on  nature.  This  will  have  taken  the  place  of 
'  conquest,'  or  the  effort  to  reduce  other  men  to 
subserviency,  which  was  the  characteristic  activity 
A    of  militarism. 

In  the  next '  opuscule,'  entitled '  Considerations 
sur  les  sciences  et  les  savants'  (1825),  Comte 
gives  an  outline  of  the  classification  of  the 
sciences  afterwards  set  forth  by  him  in  detail  in 
the  Philosophie  Positive.  The  paper  contains 
some  further  development  of  his  views  on  the 
'spiritual  power,'  but  these  are  more  explicitly 
stated  in  the  'Considerations  sur  le  pouvoir 
spirituel'  (1826).  Here  he  definitely  declares  for 
the  institution  of  a  scientific  or  philosophical 
clergy,  separate  from  the  State,  and  corresponding 

i6 


COMTE'S   FIRST   PHASE 

to  the  mediaeval  church.  This,  he  maintains  now 
as  later,  is  the  only  cure  for  the  temporary- 
anarchy  brought  on  by  the  division  of  labour  and 
the  dispersive  specialism  that  accompany  the 
generally  beneficent  march  of  a  progressive 
movement.  The  theological  base  of  the  old 
'  organic '  order  as  it  stood  having  been  irrevoc- 
ably destroyed  by  criticism,  the  problem  is  to 
find  for  the  new  order  a  positive  base  that  shall 
be  indestructible  by  criticism  because  it  is 
perfectly  rational. 


17 


CHAPTER   III 

THE   POSITIVE   PHILOSOPHY 

The  result  of  Comte's  development  so  far  was  to 
turn  him  away  for  several  years  from  schemes  of 
direct  social  reconstruction.  This  he  had  decided, 
as  against  the  Saint-Simonians,  was  premature, 
till  a  philosophy,  itself  scientific,  had  been 
founded  on  the  positive  sciences.  He  had 
already  in  his  mind  the  scheme  of  such  a  new 
theoretical  construction,  and  was  able  to  draw  up 
the  plan  of  a  *  Course  of  Positive  Philosophy '  in 
1826.  The  *  fundamental  work'  in  which  it  was 
embodied — the  Gours  de  Philosophic  Positive^  in 
six  volumes — occupied  in  actual  publication  the 
twelve  years  from  1 830  to  1842.  At  the  end  of  the 
last  volume  he  declared  himself  at  Itogth  ready  to 
set  to  work  on  the  elaboration  of  the  social  doctrine 
adumbrated  in  the  early  treatises.  This  he  com- 
pleted in  the  later  Systeme  de  Politique  Positive, 
which  must  be  reserved  for  another  chapter. 
i8 


THE   POSITIVE   PHILOSOPHY 

By  '  positive  philosophy '  we  are  to  understand 
a  philosophy  not  only  founded  on  the  sciences, 
but  in  its  whole  substance  consisting  of  their 
higher  generalisations.  The  structure  is  thus 
homogeneous,  but  there  is  no  thought  of  deduc- 
ing all  scientific  laws  from  some  single  law  or 
principle.  Such  a  deduction  is  admitted  to  be 
impossible.  Each  science  has  methods  and  laws 
peculiar  to  itself  The  abstract  sciences  form  a 
hierarchy,  beginning  with  MathejnaXics,  which  is 
fundamental  as  method  and  also  as  doctrine, 
being  itself  one  of  the  sciences  of  phenomena. 
Beginning  with  Calculus  (in  the  most  general 
sense),  it  proceeds  through  Geometry  to  Rational 
Mechanics.  Next  come  the  sciences  of  inor- 
^nic  n.atji£e — Astronomy,  Terrestrial  Physics, 
and  Chemistry.  Above  these  are  the  sciences  of 
the  organic  group — Biology  (ending  with  Cere- 
bral Physiology)  and  Sociology.  On  these^  six 
abstract  sciences  depend  the  concrete  and  the 
applIeSTscien^es.  Science,  Comte  recognises,  is 
really  one.  The  laws  of  its  component  sciences 
interact,  and  it  grows  as  a  whole.  But,  while  it 
is  divided  only  for  convenience,  the  grouping 
adopted,  he  contends,  is  the  natural  one.  That 
is  to  say,  it  has  been  discovered  as  something 
given,  not  invented   and   then  imposed  on  the 

19 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

facts.  For  the  series  of  sciences  is  determined  by 
a  corresponding  series  of  distinguishable  pheno- 
mena, the  more  simple,  general,  and  independent 
preceding  the  more  complicated,  special,  and 
dependent.  Social  phenomena  are  at  the  ex- 
treme at  once  of  dependence,  speciality,  and 
complexity.  To  deal  with  the  first  point,  the 
relation  may  be  traced  all  through.  For  social 
phenomena  depend  on  the  nature  of  the  organisms 
comprising  the  society ;  the  phenomena  of  organic 
life  again  depend  on  chemical  and  physical,  and 
these  on  astronomical  phenomena ;  and  the  con- 
ditions of  investigating  astronomical  and  physical 
phenomena  are  furnished  by  mathematics.  This 
order  of  successive  terms  does  not  exhibit  the 
whole  dependence.  The  phenomena  of  society 
are  further  directly  influenced  by  those  investi- 
gated under  the  heads  of  chemistry,  physics, 
and  astronomy.  To  take  the  most  remote  from 
man :  consider  the  difference  that  would  be 
made  to  the  human  lot  by  some  astronomically 
very  slight  change  in  the  solar  system.  On  the 
other  hand,  mathematics,  directly  applicable  to 
astronomy,  is  somewhat  less  applicable  to  physics, 
and  still  less  to  chemistry ;  and  when  organic  and 
social  phenomena  are  reached  it  is  almost  without 
efficacy.     The  Scale  of  the  sciences  from  mathe- 

20 


THE  POSITIVE   PHILOSOPHY 

matics  onward,  Comte  observes,  is  the  descending 
scale  of  perfection  in  the  sense  of  quantitative 
exactitude ;  but  perfection  is  not  to  be  confounded 
with  certaint3^  The  less  perfect  sciences  are  no 
less  certain,  though  they  are  less  exact,  than 
those  that  precede  them.  Since  all  phenomena 
without  exception  are  capable  of  being  brought 
under  positive  laws  or  formulre,  there  can  be, 
when  the  scale  is  complete,  no  difference  as 
regards  the  positive  character  of  the  sciences. 
Sociology,  once  formed,  will  be  as  positiA^e  as 
mathematics. 

The  primary  reason  by  which  Comte  determines 
his  hierarchy  is  the  relation  of  the  several 
sciences  to  the  'law  of  the  three  states,'  to 
which  we  must  now  return.  The  sciences,  it 
appears  historically,  do  not  all  pass  simultan- 
eously through  the  theological,  metaphysical,  and 
positive  stages.  Taken  as  wholes,  those  that  deal 
with  the  simplest  and  most  general  phenomena 
are  the  first  to  become  positive.  The  historical 
order  is  that  of  the  scale  given.  The  sciences  of 
organic  life,  in  Comte's  view,  had  reached  the 
positive  stage  only  just  before  his  own  time. 
For  him  it  remained  to  complete  the  hierarchy  by 
making  the  science  of  society  positive.  This  he 
was  able  to  do  by  assigning  a  law  of  intellectual 

21 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

development  with  which  other  social  phenomena 
could  be  connected,  for  there  is  a  consensus 
among  all  of  them.  It  is  enough  for  the  present 
that  one  law  has  been  determined.  We  have  in 
this  something  quite  distinctive  of  social  pheno- 
mena. There  is  nothing  even  in  organic  life 
quite  like  the  linking  of  each  generation  of 
mankind  to  those  that  preceded  it  by  the  pre- 
servation and  successive  modification  of  the 
products  of  thought.  Hence  results  a  unique 
method,  altogether  unlike  the  '  introspective ' 
method  of  the  psychologists.  His  historical  law, 
he  insists,  has  been  determined,  not  by  the 
necessarily  illusory  method  of  *  self-observation,' 
which  is  impossible  because  the  observed  and 
the  observer  are  one,  but  by  an  examination  of 
the  results  of  man's  mental  processes  as  they  lie 
before  us  in  the  actual  system  of  objective 
knowledge. 

^  The  only  method  Comte  recognised  of  investi- 
gating the  individual  mind,  prior  to  social  con- 
sideration of  it,  was  an  attempt,  such  as  had 
been  made  in  the  phrenology  of  Gall,  to  connect 
the  difierent  regions  of  the  brain  with  corre- 
sponding mental  faculties.  It  is  sufficiently 
remarkable  that,  with  no  more  satisfactory  posi- 
tion than  this  to  start  from,  he  determined  the 

22 


THE   POSITIVE   PHILOSOPHY 

mode  of  establishing  generalisations  in  sociology 
which  was  adopted  by  Mill,  who  had  long  been 
in  search  of  it,  and  confesses  that  without  the  aid 
of  Comte  he  might  never  have  arrived  at  it.  ^ 
The  procedure  is  this.  A^  law  of  historical 
development  having  been  attained  by  empirical 
generalisation  from  experience,  it  is  tested  by 
trying  whether  it  can  be  deduced  from  previ- 
ously known  laws  of  human  nature:  biological 
laws,  they  are  called  by  Comte ;  by  Mill,  psycho- 
logical. Comte,  it  must  be  observed,  regards  his 
law  of  the  three  states  as  also  a  law  of  the  indi- 
vidual human  mind,  in  which  the  historical  stages 
of  the  general  mind  are  recapitulated.  How  this 
is  ascertained,  or  whether  it  is  a  happy  illustra- 
tion of  the  method,  we  need  not  discuss.  Comte's 
'historical  method'  itself  stands  secure.  It  has 
taken  its  place  in  Mill's  logical  doctrine  as  the 
'inverse  deductive  method,'  in  distinction  from 
the  'direct  deductive  method'  characteristic  of 
physics.  In  actual  historical  work  of  a  generalis- 
ing kind  it  may  be  seen  constantly  in  use,  and 
by  Dr.  Tylor  it  has  been  further  developed  as  a 
method  applicable  in  the  special  researches  of 
anthropologists. 

Comte  himself  carried  his  sociological  theoris- 
ing beyond  the  limits  of  recorded  history.     His 
23 


COMTE  AND   MILL 

explanation  of  the  origin  of  religion  ascribes 
to  primitive  man  a  doctrine  of  universal  anima- 
tion, called  by  him  '  fetishism.'  At  the  beginning 
of  the  theological  stage,  men  spontaneously 
regarded  each  particular  thing  exhibiting  active 
powers  as  alive.  It  was  thus  at  first  the  par- 
ticular object  that  was  deified.  By  a  pro- 
cess of  abstraction  and  generalisation,  classes 
of  objects  were  brought  under  the  imaginary 
dominion  of  a  separable  deity.  The  stage  of 
polytheism  was  thus  reached.  Further  general- 
isation led  to  monotheism,  the  last  phase  of 
theology.  Through  all  this  process  'metaphysi- 
cal' thought  was  already  at  work,  reducing  by 
its  dissolvent  criticism  the  potency  of  theological 
explanations.  Finally,  it  has  attenuated  even 
theism  to  the  point  where  it  becomes  superfluous. 
The  God  of  the  Deist  is  equivalent  to  the  meta- 
physical abstraction  Nature,  and  becomes  merely 
a  name  that  is  allowed  to  furnish  no  element  of 
detailed  explanation,  this  being  left  to  the  grow- 
ing sciences.  When  the  sciences  are  mature,  the 
'causes'  (more  than  phenomenal)  of  the  theo- 
logian and  the  metaphysician  are  alike  dismissed ; 
and,  as  Avas  said,  nothing  is  left  but  a  formulated 
law.  Not  till  this  mode  of  thinking  has  succes- 
sively extended  itself  through  the  series  of  the 

24 


THE  POSITIVE   PHILOSOPHY 

sciences,  and  prevailed  in  Sociology  also/can  the 
human  mind  be  considered  as  having  finally 
reached  the  positive  state. 

Already  in  the  Philosophie  Positive  Comte  has 
arrived  at  his  conception  of  Humanity  as  the 
organic  unity  within  which  sociological  law  is 
manifested.  This  organism  consists  of  men  past, 
present,  and  future;  excluding,  however,  from 
participation  its  anti-social  elements,  w^hile,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  useful  domestic  animals  are 
associated  Tvith  man  in  a  subsidiary  relation. 
Humanity  is  conceived  as  having  a  beginning 
and  an  end  in  time,  though  Comte  does  not 
speculate  about  origins.  It  tends  as  a  whole  to 
a  final  order,  which  will  approach  equilibrium  but 
never  actually  reach  it.  After  this  closer  and 
closer  approximation  to  a  fixed  ideal,  there  will  p^vnu* 
be  an  inevitable  decadence  as  the  earth  ceases  to 
be  fit  for  human  habitation,  and  the  problem  for 
man  will  then  be  to  adapt  himself  with  dignity 
to  the  descent.  With  this,  however,  sociology 
need  not  now  concern  itself:  we  are  still  in  the 
movement  of  ascent,  which  is  of  more  interest. 
The  progressive  movement  with  which  we  are 
specially  concerned  is  that  which  has  gone  on 
continuously  in  the  West  from  the  period  of 
Asiatic  or  Egyptian  theocracy  to  the  attainment 
25 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

of  the  positive  stage  by  the  most  advanced  minds 
of  contemporary  Europe.  To  explain  historical 
s/  progress,  Comte  does  not  recur  to  theories  about 
race  or  climate.  These,  indeed,  are  not  excluded. 
They  may,  it  is  allowed,  furnish  minor  explana- 
tions when  the  time  comes  to  carry  sociology  into 
detail,  but  the  progress  now  dealt  with  is  held 
to  be  a  necessary  evolution  of  man  as  man,  not 
due  essentially  to  the  character  of  some  partic- 
^  ular  race  or  races.  What  is  at  present  the  most 
advanced  part  of  humankind  will  afterwards 
extend  its  completed  type  to  the  whole,  all  men 
as  such  being  capable  of  assimilating  the  progress 
at  first  achieved  only  by  favoured  societies  or 
^  individuals. 

With  his  law  of  intellectual  evolution  Comte 
seeks  to  connect  a  corresponding  law  of  practical 
evolution.  To  the  theological  stage  corresponds 
militarism.  This  first  takes  the  form  of  aggres- 
sive warfare  and  systematic  conquest.  As 
theology  passes  into  its  last  or  monotheistic 
phase  and  becomes  attenuated  into  metaphysics, 
defensive  is  substituted  for  oiffensive  war.  Then, 
as  positivity  grows,  militarism  is  slowly  super- 
seded by  industrialism.  These,  Comte  maintains, 
are  necessary  phases  of  human  progress,  and 
their   treatment  belongs   to   abstract  sociology; 

26 


THE   POSITIVE   PHILOSOPHY 

but  in  the  concrete  we  find  the  first  realised  in 
different  degrees  in  Asia  and  Egypt  and  in  clas- 
sical antiquity,  the  second  in  the  Middle  Age  of 
Western  Europe,  and  the  third  in  the  outlines  of 
a  new  positive  order  now  appearing  in  the  most 
advanced  nations  of  the  West. 

By  the  Greek  States,  although  their  history 
belongs  generally  to  the  theologico-military  phase 
of  offensive  warfare,  this  is  not  typically  repre- 
sented. Since  no  one  State  could  subjugate  the 
rest,  the  characteristic  movement  was  checked 
on  the  side  of  activity,  and  the  distinctive  develop- 
ment of  Greece  became  intellectual.  The  last 
result  of  this  was  to  reduce  polytheism  to  mono- 
theism, and  to  prepare  for  the  Catholic  type ; 
though  Catholicism,  in  the  account  it  gave  of 
itself,  traced  its  monotheism  exclusively  to  its 
Jewish  predecessors.  The  Romans  successfully 
carried  forward  the  system  of  conquest,  in  which 
the  Greeks  had  failed  ;  and  the  stage  of  offensive 
w^ar  culminated  in  the  Roman  Empire.  The 
problem  for  this,  and  for  the  social  groups  into 
which  it  broke  up,  became  henceforth  defence. 
The  Middle  Ages  represent  the  system  of  defen- 
sive warfare  combined  with  a  reduced  form  of 
theology.  In  this  period,  the  greatest  advance  is 
the  separation  of  the  temporal  and  the  spiritual 
27 


OOMTE   AND   MILL 

powers,  confused  both  in  the  theocratic  East  and 
in  classical  antiquity.  This  advance  was  made 
only  by  the  Catholic  West.  Byzantine  Christianity 
and  Islam — the  rival  form  of  reduced  theology 
that  shared  in  the  division  of  the  Roman  world 
— alike  retained  the  confusion.  The  Catholic 
synthesis  reaches  its  typical  form  in  the  twelfth 
and  thirteenth  centuries.  Ever  since,  it  has  been 
breaking  up  under  the  joint  action  of  the  critical 
or  revolutionary  'metaphysics'  and  the  growing 
positive  sciences,  now  tending,  along  with  the 
rising  industrial  system,  to  a  definitive  recon- 
struction of  European  life.  During  the  fourteenth 
and  fifteenth  centuries  the  decomposition  was 
spontaneous,  and  was  shared  in  by  all  the  Western 
populations.  After  that  it  became  systematic, 
first  in  Protestantism  and  then  in  Deism,  and 
brought  with  it  first  the  break  of  the  Reformation 
in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  then  the  revolu- 
tionary crisis  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth.  This 
crisis  can  only  be  terminated  when  the  positive, 
as  distinguished  from  the  negative,  movement 
has  furnished  the  elements  of  a  new  and  final 
synthesis. 

The  practical  or  '  temporal '  power  of  the 
positive  age,  dawning  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
will    be   that   of    industrial,   and    no   longer   of 


THE   POSITIVE   PHILOSOPHY 

military,  chiefs.  Its  supreme  '  spiritual '  power 
will  consist  of  philosophers  who  have  undergone 
an  encyclopaedic  training  in  the  positive  sciences, 
and  are  able  to  view  them  in  their  systematic 
unity.  These  positive  philosophers  will  be 
properly  a  special  class  of  scientific  men  set  apart 
to  deal  with  generalities,  since  the  specialists  in 
particular  branches  are  clearly  incompetent  for 
the  work  of  co-ordination.  The  highest  social 
rank  will  be  conceded  to  them,  but  they  will 
have  no  material  power.  Thus  they  will  take 
the  place  of  the  mediaeval  priesthood,  which 
has  furnished  the  ideal  pattern  of  a  theoretical 
class  standing  apart  from  practical  life,  but 
directing  it  through  the  consultative  voice  it  has 
in  affairs  and,  above  all,  by  its  system  of  education 
applied  to  all  the  other  social  classes  and  per- 
meating them  from  youth  with  its  dominant 
conceptions. 

We  can  now  see  how  Comte,  in  his  'funda- 
mental work,'  while  moving  away  for  a  time  from 
the  social  problem  he  had  set  himself  to  resolve, 
was  preparing  the  ideas  that  were  to  be  brought 
together  in  a  more  concentrated  form  in  the 
Politique  Positive.  Naturally  he  found  it  difficult 
to  understand  on  what  ground  disciples  and 
admirers  of  the  Philosophy  could  repudiate  the 
29 


COMTE  AND    MILL 

Polity,  which  was  to  him  its  necessary  sequel. 
A  partial  understanding,  however,  is  possible. 
The  chapter  of  the  Philosophy  vindicating  the 
progressive  character  of  the  Catholic  Middle 
Age  opens  with  some  pages  in  which  he  sets 
forth  a  doctrine  regarding  the  separation  of 
the  spiritual  from  the  temporal  power  which 
Liberals  like  Grote  and  Mill  might  think  them- 
selves able  to  accept.  The  direct  dominance  of  a 
theoretical  class  is  there  described  as  superficially 
plausible,  since  it  places  intelligence  apparently 
at  the  summit,  but  as  in  reality  the  most  fatally 
unprogressive  of  social  orders.  It  renders  in- 
eftective  the  most  powerful  and  original  minds 
of  theoretic  type,  for  which  an  administrative 
hierarchy  has  no  proper  place.  By  the  im- 
mediate connection  of  the  theoretical  class  with 
practice,  no  room  is  left  for  speculative  research 
undertaken  without  reference  to  material  needs. 
Yet  this  detachment  is  of  supreme  importance 
for  the  progressive  character  of  the  practical  arts 
themselves.  The  true  form  of  a  spiritual  power 
is  one  in  which  the  few  eminent  theoretical 
minds  are  protected  by  the  State  in  freely  doing 
their  own  work,  but  do  not  aim  at  any  place  in 
a  governing  corporation. 

This  is,  of  course,  a  very  singular  prelude  to  a 
30 


THE  POSITIVE   PHILOSOPHY 

defence  of  the  mediaeval  hierarchy,  not  simply  as 
an  institution  adapted  to  its  time,  but  as  a  model 
for  the  future.  It  may  be  compared  with  a  para- 
graph in  one  of  the  early  '  opuscules,'  where  the 
position  of  the  Catholic  clergy  in  the  Middle  Ages 
is  declared  to  be  analogous  to  that  of  the  Greek 
philosophers  in  relation  to  the  State  as  compared 
with  the  hierarchs  of  Asia.  The  presupposition, 
however,  that  European  history  has  been  continu- 
ously progressive,  whence  it  followed  that  the 
Middle  Ages  must  embody  a  progressive  phase, 
was  not  peculiar  to  Comte.  Mill  was  quite  willing 
to  accept  the  whole  view  so  far  as  the  past  was 
concerned ;  and,  in  critical  articles,  commended 
to  English  readers  the  work  of  French  historians 
by  whom  what  he  thought  to  be  Protestant  pre- 
judice was  controverted.  The  difference  appeared 
when  Comte  fully  recognised  his  own  affinities, 
ceased  to  recur  to  merely  fanciful  combinations, 
and  left  no  doubt  that  it  was  of  the  essence  of  his 
own  spiritual  power  to  be  an  authoritative  cor- 
poration, which  he  no  longer  hesitated  to  treat 
as  analogous  to  an  Egyptian  or  Chaldean 
theocracy. 

By  way  of  comment  it  need  only  be  remarked 
that  Comte  certainly  did  not  in  the  end  fulfil  the 
condition  of  impartiality  he  at  first  laid  down  for 
31 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

himself  in  rebuking  the  revolutionary  hatred  of 
the  mediaeval  past.  The  antipathy  he  has  ex- 
pressed again  and  again  for  the  '  critical '  periods 
of  Greece  and  modern  Europe  is  quite  equal  to 
that  of  any  Protestant  or  revolutionary  Deist  for 
the  Middle  Ages.  This  apparent  necessity  to 
hate  the  one  type  and  love  the  other  seems  to 
indicate  contrasts  hard  to  deal  with  on  any  theory 
of  continuous  progress.  And,  indeed,  it  may  be 
observed  that  there  is  a  place  in  Comte's  socio- 
logical doctrine  for  pathological  phenomena  and 
reversals  of  progressive  movements,  though  he  has 
given  it  little  theoretical  development. 


32 


CHAPTER  IV 

mill's  logic  and  metaphysics 

In  the  preceding  chapter  I  have  dealt  only  with 
the  generalities  of  the  Philosophie  Positive,  as  set 
forth  at  the  beginning,  and  with  the  Sociology 
contained  in  the  last  three  volumes.  The  inter- 
mediate part  of  the  work  contains  the  systematisa- 
tion  of  the  five  preparatory  sciences,  Mathematics, 
Astronomy,  Physics,  Chemistry,  and  Biology. 
Comte  himself  did  not  claim  the  knowledge  of  a 
specialist  in  any  of  these  except  mathematics, 
nor  did  he  exaggerate  the  importance  of  his  pre- 
liminary work.  Perhaps  afterwards,  when  those 
who  had  accepted  it  almost  without  qualification 
would  follow  him  no  further,  he  came  to  under- 
rate it.  It  had  a  genuinely  emancipating  influence, 
especially  in  England,  where  it  soon  began  to  draw 
more  attention  than  it  had  gained  in  France. 

Among  the  most  enthusiastic  readers  of  the 
successive  volumes  was  Mill,  who  in  1841  began  a 
C  33 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

correspondence  with  Comte  which  continued  till 
1846.  At  first  Mill  announced  himself  as  a 
disciple,  but  he  was  a  disciple  who  claimed  the 
right  to  criticise,  and  thought  to  exercise  as  well 
as  to  receive  influence.  Later,  what  seemed  to 
him  the  appallingly  systematic  character  of 
Comte's  mind,  for  which  everj^  principle  was 
settled  and  every  detail  had  the  certainty  of 
positive  science,  showed  him  that  the  kind  of 
interchange  he  had  hoped  for  was  impossible.  To 
Mill,  as  to  early  friends,  Comte  frankly  declared 
that  he  had  no  use  for  criticism,  except  regarding 
the  legitimacy  of  deductions.  That  any  one  who 
remained  at  the  theological  or  at  the  metaphysical 
stage  should  not  accept  the  new  system  was  in- 
telligible ;  but  for  a  mind  that  had  reached  full 
positivity  he  did  not  see  what  attitude  was 
possible  but  adhesion.  At  first,  however,  the 
correspondence  was  extremely  cordial.  Comte 
read  with  interest  Mill's  System  of  Logic,  pub- 
lished in  1843,  making  for  it  an  exception  from 
his  rule  of  not  reading  contemporary  work.  He 
found  in  it  the  most  advanced  position,  next  to 
his  own,  occupied  by  any  European  thinker ;  and 
this,  he  perceived,  had  been  independently 
arrived  at.  It  was  MilPs  generosity,  he  declared, 
that  had  led  him  to  cite  the  Philosophie  Positive 

34 


MILL'S   LOGIC  AND   METAPHYSICS 

so  frequently.  The  development  of  his  thought 
would  have  been  substantially  the  same  with- 
out  it. 

This  is  true,  as  Mill  showed  himself  aware  later. 
Still,  in  the  history  of  inductive  logic  Comte  ranks 
as  his  immediate  precursor,  his  remoter  precursors 
being  Bacon  and  Hume.  His  direct  studies  for 
his  work  had  been  mainly  in  actual  science  and 
in  contemporary  English  writers  of  minor  origin- 
ality. As  the  essential  problem,  he  fixed  at  last 
on  the  question:  What  constitutes  scientific 
proof  in  the  experimental  investigation  of  nature  ? 
It  is  here  that  he  himself  came  to  see  his  distinc- 
tive strength  as  compared  with  that  of  Cofi^e, 
who,  he  found,  had  never  attained  a  just  concep- 
tion of  the  conditions  of  proof  as  distinguished 
from  method.  The  problem  of  method  had  of 
course  been  specially  raised  by  Bacon,  who  gave  a 
first  sketch  of  the  procedure  formulated  by  Mill 
in  his  'canons  of  induction'  as  the  ground  for 
applying  his  test  of  truth.  On  the  question  of 
ultimate  truth  in  science,  which  was  Hume's 
special  problem.  Bacon  was  quite  vague.  Here 
Comte  and  Mill  were  equally  clear  in  substance, 
and,  by  more  serious  occupation  with  the  actual 
processes  of  science,  had  disentangled  the  idea  of 
fixed  law  or  order ;  which,  while  it  had  been  put 

35 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

forward  by  Hume,  had  received  from  him  a 
sceptical  colour.  This,  he  said,  is  all  that  there 
seems  to  be  in  science;  but,  if  our  scholastic 
dogmatists  are  right,  there  ought  to  be  something 
more.  That  the  order  was  really  positive  or 
certain,  Comte  was  assured  by  the  applicability 
of  mathematics  to  the  things  of  nature.  For  the 
power  of  dealing  with  them  by  quantitative 
measurement  implies  positive  law.  With  this 
insight  he  was  content;  and  here  he  fell  short 
of  Mill.  In  the  proper  sense  of  the  term — not  in 
Comte's  rather  abusive  sense — Mill  was  a  meta- 
physician ;  that  is  to  say,  he  was  concerned,  like 
Hume,  with  the  first  principles  of  knowledge  or 
science.  He  could  not  be  content  till  he  had 
determined  on  what  most  general  ground  we  are 
entitled  to  assert  one  fixed  order  and  no  other  in 
each  particular  case. 

We  may  see  this  even  where  Mill  is  thought  to 
have  failed.  Take  Comte's  opening  mathematical 
chapters.  He  starts  with  a  discussion  of  the  end 
of  mathematical  science,  not  indeed  its  practical 
end,  but  its  end  as  pure  theory.  This  he  defines 
as  '  indirect  measurement.'  Then  he  applies  his 
immense  analytic  and  synthetic  power  to  determine 
and  classify  its  methods.  The  problem,  how  we 
know  mathematical  propositions  to  be  true,  is 

36 


MILL'S   LOGIC   AND   METAPHYSICS 

scarcely  touched.  Essentially  he  regards  mathe- 
matics as  a  natural  science  of  given  phenomena. 
A  problem  like  that  raised  by  Kant  does  not  exist 
for  him.  Mill,  on  the  other  hand,  though  not  in 
close  contact  with  Kant's  thought,  regards  the 
question  about  the  evidence  of  geometrical  axioms 
as  fundamental.  Are  they  '  synthetic  judgments 
a  priori,'  or  are  they  generalisations  from  ex- 
perience ?  His  conclusion  that  they  are  general- 
isations from  experience  is  not  now  accepted,  at 
least  in  the  form  he  gave  to  it ;  but  he  dealt  with 
the  problem. 

Where  Mill  completely  succeeded  was  in  putting  u 
the  logic  of  Induction  on  a  firm  basis.  To  begin  "^ 
with,  he  had  been  thoroughly  trained  in  the 
scholastic  logic  and  its  Aristotelian  original,  and 
knew  exactly  what  it  could  do  and  could  not  do. 
With  a  view  partly  to  refuting  the  indiscriminate 
prejudice  against  it  that  had  reigned  in  scientific 
quarters  since  the  seventeenth  century,  and  was 
only  now  beginning  to  give  way,  he  first  worked 
out  the  theory  of  Syllogism  on  lines  of  his  o-^vn. 
Only  when  he  had  disposed  of  this  did  he  go  on 
to  Induction,  by  which  he  was  for  a  long  time 
stopped.  The  question  was,  How  can  we  get, 
from  the  result  of  a  particular  experiment,  a 
general  law  which  we  know  to  be  true?  The 
37 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

formal  logicians  had  little  to  say  on  this.  What 
they  called  'perfect  induction'  was  a  barren 
summary  of  particulars  already  known,  not  a 
process  leading  to  new  knowledge.  An  impression 
was  left  that  scientific  induction — all  of  it  formally 
'  imperfect ' — is  a  kind  of  mystery,  producing  con- 
viction no  one  can  say  how.  This  air  of  mystery 
Mill  at  length  dissipated.  Certain  forms  of  ex- 
perimental '  method,'  he  showed,  yield  a  valid 
general  conclusion  because  it  can  be  seen  that  no 
conclusion  but  this  is  compatible  with  the  axiom 
called  the  '  uniformity  of  nature/  The  expression 
he  chose  for  this  uniformity  was  the  '  law  of 
causation,'  which  he  stated  as  the  proposition 
that  every  event  has  an  'invariable  and  uncon- 
ditional antecedent,'  which  we  call  its  cause. 
That  is  to  say,  there  is  some  determinate  phen- 
omenon or  group  of  phenomena,  the  existence  of 
which  being  given,  the  phenomenon  we  call  the 
effect  will  follow.  His  attempt  to  assign  the 
ground  of  our  belief  in  this  law  itself,  like  his 
theory  of  mathematical  axioms,  has  not  found 
permanent  acceptance;  but  none  the  less  his 
determination  of  the  valid  forms  of  inductive 
inference  remains  definitive.  This  does  not  mean 
that  it  was  incapable  of  improvement,  or  even  that 
he  left  it  relatively  as  perfect  as  Aristotle  left  the 

38 


MILL'S   LOGIC  AND   METAPHYSICS 

theory  of  syllogistic  logic.  Physical  science  has 
been  going  on  ever  since,  and  logicians  formulate 
and  justify  its  methods  after  they  have  been 
invented,  not  before.  It  is  now  generally  admitted, 
for  example,  that  Mill  underrated  the  place  of 
deduction  from  hypotheses  in  physical  science. 
He  had  a  theory  of  rational  deduction  that  was  in 
great  part  true,  but  he  limited  it  too  much  to  a  I 
tracing  of  the  consequences  of  known  generalisa- 
tions from  experience.  There  is  more  place  than 
he  cared  to  allow  for  conjecture  as  the  starting- 
point  of  deduction — of  course  with  a  view  to 
verification  by  facts.  But,  as  far  as  the  process  of 
induction  is  concerned,  the  '  new  organon '  that 
Bacon  had  called  for  was  at  last  created.  Every 
induction  was  shown  to  imply  at  once  some 
particular  experience,  and  a  deduction  from  the 
'  law  of  causation'  assumed  to  be  universal.  There 
can  be  a  system  of  scientific  truths,  because  nature 
as  seen  in  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect  is 
uniform. 

With  respect  to  the  idea  itself  of  '  cause,'  Mill 
and  Comte  differ  only  in  the  form  of  expression. 
When  Comte  rejects  the  use  of  the  word,  and 
prefers  to  speak  only  of  '  law,'  he  means  to  dismiss 
ontological  causes,  supposed  realities  behind 
phenomena  that  have  intrinsic  power  or  efiicacy 

39 


U 


COMTE   AND    MILL 

to  produce  certain  effects.  Mill  retains  it  because 
he  thinks  it  is  most  properly  regarded  simply  as 
a  name  for  the  phenomenal  antecedents  that 
'invariably  and  unconditionally'  precede  their 
phenomenal  consequents.  The  negative  result 
of  Hume's  analysis  is  accepted,  implicitly  or 
explicitly,  by  both.  We  have  no  knowledge  of 
any  power  in  the  cause  to  produce  this  effect 
rather  than  that,  or  of  any  tie  between  the  cause 
and  the  effect.  The  laws  of  nature  are  pheno- 
menal laws,  not  laws  of  '  things-in-themselves,' 
and  our  knowledge  of  them  depends  wholly  on 
experience. 

Nevertheless  there  is  in  Comte  a  negative 
dogmatism  to  which  Mill  did  not  commit  himself, 
and  which  he  did  not  hold  as  a  belief  Comte 
has  at  bottom  no  doubt  that  a  real  world  of 
mindless  objectivity  composes  the  sum  of  existence 
prior  to  the  appearance  of  animal  life.  On  the 
origin  of  life,  as  on  the  origin  of  man,  he  has  no 
theory.  His  position  is  distinguished  from 
materialism  by  the  rejection,  on  principle,  of 
every  attempt  to  derive  the  higher  from  the 
lower.  Thus  he  can  take  an  essentially  teleo- 
logical  view  both  of  life  and  mind.  A  true  pro- 
vidential order,  he  holds,  has  been  introduced 
into  the  world  by  man.  He  has  no  objection  to 
40 


MILL'S   LOGIC  AND   METAPHYSICS 

the  association  of  this  doctrine  historically  with 
a  teleological  optimism  like  that  of  Leibniz.  Yet, 
while  he  rejects  the  name  of  'atheism'  (with 
some  asperity,  as  Mill  remarks),  the  rejection 
means  only  that  he  has  no  interest  in  atheistic 
cosmogonies.  His  objection  to  them  indeed  is 
that  they  are  in  essence  a  kind  of  theology  or 
metaphysics,  seeking  explanation  where  the 
human  mind  can  find  none.  He  would  not  even 
permit  a  speculative  interest  in  the  physical 
universe  beyond  the  solar  system,  because 
nothing  external  to  this  can  have  any  sufficiently 
direct  bearing  on  the  human  lot.  With  the 
humanistic,  as  against  an  attempted  cosmic, 
point  of  view.  Mill  had  much  sympathy ;  but  he 
was  more  aware  than  Comte  ever  became  that 
the  limitations  of  objective  science  are  narrower 
than  those  of  the  human  mind. 

Mill's  metaphysical  positions  are  to  be  found 
partly  in  the  Logic,  but  chiefly  in  the  Examina- 
tion of  Sir  Williain  Hamilton's  Philosophy 
(1865).  This  treatise  was  written,  as  he  has  him- 
self explained,  with  an  aim  that  was  ultimately 
practical.  He  regarded  the  kind  of  philosophise 
ing  rather  vaguely  called  Intuitionism  as  the 
enemy  of  all  reform,  because  its  tendency  was  to 
treat  mere  customary  associations  of  ideas,  dis- 
41 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

soluble  by  analysis,  as  'necessary  truths'  known 
prior  to  experience.  Of  this  philosophy  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  (1788-1856)  seemed  to  him  the 
best  and  strongest  representative ;  descending  as 
he  did  from  the  Scottish  school  of  Common  Sense 
founded  by  Reid,  but  deriving  some  of  his  ideas 
from  Kant,  and  generally  impressive  by  the 
copiousness  of  his  learning.  To  Kant  and  his 
successors,  representing  the  latest  phase  of 
Continental  Rationalism  (as  distinguished  from 
English  Experientialism),  eclectic  thinkers  both 
in  France  and  England  had  turned  under  the 
impression  that  this  was  somehow  an  antidote  to 
the  irreligious  'philosophy  of  the  eighteenth 
century'  descending  from  Locke.  Hence  arose 
hybrid  philosophies  like  those  of  Cousin,  of 
Whewell,  of  Hamilton  himself,  and  of  Hamilton's 
disciple  Mansel.  The  relations  to  religion  on 
both  sides,  if  Ave  take  the  complete  historical 
series  in  England  and  on  the  Continent,  are  rather 
varied.  Mill  has  noticed  the  paradox  that  in 
his  time  those  who  regarded  the  law  of  causation 
as  an  intuitive  truth  were  understood  to  allow 
miracles,  and  those  who  derived  it  only  from 
experience  to  reject  them.  The  controversy  that 
burst  forth  over  the  Examination  of  Hamilton 
(in  which  Mansel  also  was  dealt  with)  may  be 
42 


MILL'S   LOGIC   AND   METAPHYSICS 

considered  as  having  closed  this  particular  phase 
of  the  opposing  philosophies  in  England. 
Successors  may  be  found  both  of  the  '  Intui- 
tionists'  and  of  Mill,  but  none  would  now  class 
themselves  precisely  with  either  side. 

Much  of  the  Examination  of  Hamilton  is 
constructive.  In  pure  philosophy  the  most 
effective  chapters  are  those  in  which  Mill  has 
restated  and  developed  Berkeley's  idealism  as 
against  the '  natural  realism '  or  '  natural  dualism ' 
of  the  Common  Sense  school.  According  to  this 
characteristic  doctrine  of  Reid  and  Hamilton, 
consciousness  has  an  immediate  intuition  of  its 
object  in  contrast  with  itself.  Matter  and  mind 
are  directly  known  as  antithetic  realities. 
Against  this,  Mill  worked  out  on  psychological 
grounds  a  positive  explanation  of  our  belief  in 
the  external  world,  reducing  what  we  come  to  / 
know  of  matter  wholly  to  phenomena  and  their 
relations.  The  grounds  were  furnished  partly  by 
Reid's  successor,  Thomas  Brown,  who  had 
developed  the  Scottish  philosophy  in  the  direction 
of  Associationism,  and  partly  by  Professor  Bain, 
then  rising  as  an  original  psychologist  of  the 
Associationist  school.  Having  defined  matter, 
in  a  phrase  that  has  become  famous,  as  'per-w 
manent  possibility  of  sensation,'  Mill  goes  on  to 
43 


COMTE  AND   MILL 

investigate  the  nature  of  the  psychological 
subject.  This  he  finds  more  resistant  to  analysis 
than  the  object.  If  we  call  mind  a  '  series  of 
feelings/  we  must  add  that  it  is  '  aware  of  itself 
as  a  series/  and  this  makes  it  something  quite 
peculiar  and  not  finally  explicable.  Thus  he 
remains  in  the  end  nearer  to  Berkeley  than  to 
Hume  (whose  Treatise  perhaps  he  had  not  read). 
Mind  is  for  him  ultimately  more  real  than 
matter. 

Against  all  attempts  to  establish  'necessary 
truths '  on  the  mere  deliverance  of  consciousness, 
he  urges  the  law  of  'inseparable  association/ 
recurring  here  to  his  father's  Analysis.  He 
would  like  to  reduce  not  only  arithmetical  and 
geometrical  axioms,  but  the  formal  laws  of 
thought,  to  generalisations  from  experience. 
Free-will,  which  Hamilton  made  the  basis  of 
morals,  he  declines  to  accept  as  a  deliverance  of 
consciousness;  but  puts  forward  a  doctrine 
of  his  own  which,  while  fundamentally  deter- 
minist,  allows  in  each  person  a  certain  power  to 
modify  his  own  character  if  he  has  the  desire. 
From  ethical  theism,  as  we  can  now  see  in  the 
light  of  his  later  work,  he  is  not  averse.  Indeed 
he  shows  himself  rather  anxious  to  prove,  in 
opposition  to  sceptical  theologians  who  would 
44 


MILL'S  LOGIC   AND   METAPHYSICS 

ground  theism  itself  on  belief  in  revelation,  that 
the  idea  of  a  God  with  moral  attributes  is  not 
irrational.  What  he  will  have  nothing  to  do 
with  is  an  ontology  of  the  Absolute,  such  as 
Hamilton  and  Mansel  attempt  to  combine  with 
personal  theism  and  acceptance  of  revealed 
religion.  At  the  point  where  an  ontology  of  his 
own,  differing  from  that  of  his  antagonists,  might 
have  been  expected,  his  idealistic  theory  breaks 
off.  It  serves  merely  to  limit  dogmatic  affirma- 
tions, without  suggesting  any  doctrine  concerning 
the  reality  of  the  universe  that  goes  beyond 
particular  scientific  hypotheses.  In  later  chapters 
we  shall  see  more  in  detail  both  his  likeness  and 
unlikeness  here  to  Comte. 


45 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   RELIGION   OF   HUMANITY 

Between  the  last  volume  of  the  Fhilosophie 
Positive  and  the  first  of  the  Politique  Positive 
there  took  place  what  is  sometimes  regarded  as 
a  revolution  in  Comte's  manner  of  thinking.  In 
definitely  returning  from  the  laws  of  social 
development  to  a  scheme  of  social  reconstruc- 
tion, he  no  longer  called  himself  simply  a  philo- 
sopher, but  came  forward  as  the  founder  of  a 
religion.  This  has  been  explained  by  thorough- 
going disciples  as  merely  a  change  in  expression. 
In  his  earlier  works  he  spoke  uniformly  as  if 
rejecting  everything  that  was  called  religion,  and 
made  philosophy  the  highest  name.  But  by 
'religion,'  it  is  said,  he  then  meant  only  theology. 
Later  he  distinguished  more  exactly,  and,  while 
continuing  to  reject  every  theology,  took  religion 
instead  of  philosophy  for  the  name  of  what  is 
highest  in  his  synthesis.     This  may  serve  as  a 

46 


THE   RELIGION   OF   HUMANITY 

partial  explanation ;  but  there  was  also  something 
unforeseen.  The  germinal  ideas  of  the  social 
reconstruction  that  afterwards  took  form  are 
indeed  present  in  the  earlier  works,  but  the 
organised  'cult  of  humanity'  is  new.  The  men 
of  science  or  philosophers  who  constitute  the 
revived  'spiritual  power'  are  now  not  merely 
successors  of  the  mediseval  clergy,  but  are  defi- 
nitely clothed  with  sacerdotal  attributes.  The 
ideal  for  the  future  is  theocracy  minus  theology. 
The  sciences  are  conceived  as  co-ordinated  finally 
in  authorised  text-books  in  a  way  that  was  hardly 
prefigured  in  the  first  outlines,  where  we  were 
left  to  suppose  special  theoretical  researches  still 
going  on  in  freedom  side  by  side  with  the  work 
of  the  class  that  is  to  co-ordinate  them.  And 
Comte  at  first  had  an  apparently  clearer  sense 
that  the  work  of  co-ordination  could  not  be  done 
once  for  all  by  any  one  man.  There  is  in  him, 
after  the  completion  of  the  PJdlosophie  Positive, 
an  undeniable  '  exaltation,'  as  Littre  called  it. 

The  revolution,  however,  is  more  apparent  than 
real.  A  well-known  distinctive  point  in  his  later 
system,  for  example,  is  the  supreme  position 
assigned  to  the  life  of  the  affections.  To  this, 
in  the  ideal  order,  the  intellectual  life  will  be 
secondary,  while  practical  activity  comes  third. 
47 


COMTE  AND   MILL 

Mill,  in  his  Anguste  Comte  and  Positivism^  traced 
this  prescription  for  mankind  in  general  to  the 
circumstances  of  Comte's  life.  With  his  disposi- 
tion to  organise  everything,  he  would  have  made 
the  life  of  feeling  supreme  for  all  during  the 
whole  of  life,  because  during  the  short  period  of 
his  attachment  to  Madame  Clotilde  de  Vaux 
(before  her  death  in  1846)  he  himself  had  found 
full  satisfaction  in  it.  In  an  earlier  correspon- 
dence, however  (not  published  when  Mill  wrote), 
Comte  had  expressed  precisely  the  same  view. 
In  fact,  a  biographical  explanation  no  more 
applies  than  in  the  somewhat  similar  case  of 
Mill  himself,  who  has  pointed  out  that  his 
advocacy  of  equal  social  and  political  rights  for 
both  sexes  was  not  originally  due  to  the  influence 
of  his  wife.  His  position  that  justice  absolutely 
demands  equality  dated  from  his  youth,  when  he 
had  maintained  it  against  his  father's  view,  inci- 
dentally expressed,  that  democratic  government 
does  not  strictly  require  that  women  should  take 
part  in  electing  representatives.  The  mental 
history  of  both  philosophers,  it  may  be  observed, 
suggests  something  very  like  '  innate  ideas.' 

An  occasion  for  bringing  forward  his  new  con- 
ceptions with  practical  effect  seemed  to  offer  itself 
to  Comte  in  the  Revolution  of  1848.     It  was  in 
48 


THE   RELIGION   OF   HUMANITY 

that  year  that  he  published  his  Discours  sur 
VEnsemhle  du  Fositivisme,  afterwards  incorpor- 
ated in  the  first  vokime  of  the  Politique  Positive. 
From  the  chiefs  of  revolutions  and  reactions 
alike,  however,  nothing  but  discouragement  was 
to  come  to  him.  We  may  completely  assent  to 
what  his  disciples  say  of  his  heroic  persistence 
in  his  own  course,  now  as  during  the  rest  of  his 
life.  At  the  same  time,  there  came  in  more  and 
more  an  element  of  illusion  that  was  absent  from 
his  first  period.  The  new  religion,  he  predicted 
later,  would  have  received  official  recognition  in 
Europe  at  the  end  of  a  century  from  the  Revolu- 
tion of  1789.  He  himself,  if  he  lived  long  enough, 
would  be  saluted  as  the  High  Priest  of  Humanity. 
But  to  say  more  on  this  is  not  worth  while,  even 
if  there  were  space.  The  social  reconstruction 
forms  an  imaginative  synthesis  not  affected  in 
its  real  interest  by  failure,  actual  or  prospective, 
to  realise  itself  in  the  expression  that  Comte 
gave  to  it. 

His  later  doctrine  is  expounded  in  the  Systeme 
de  Politique  Positive  (4  vols.,  1851-1854)  and  in 
the  Synthese  Subjective  (1856).  The  superiority, 
in  some  respects,  of  these  works  over  the  earlier 
ones  is  admitted  even  by  Mill,  who  was  least  in 
sympathy  with  them.  Their  retrograde  character 
D  49 


COMTE   AND    MILL 

is  seen  chiefly  in  the  growing  antipathy,  which 
Mill  notes,  to  intellect  as  such.  But,  as  an  intel- 
lectual structure,  they  themselves  rise  above  the 
earlier  works,  both  in  discrimination  and  in 
breadth  of  view,  not  to  speak  of  the  advance 
generally  allowed  as  regards  imagination  and  feel- 
ing. The  superiority  may  be  seen  especially  in 
the  historical  exposition ;  where  it  was  less  to  be 
looked  for,  since  Comte  \vas  more  preoccupied 
than  he  had  been  formerly  w^ith  '  order '  as  dis- 
tinguished from  'progress,'  with  what  he  called 
'  social  statics '  as  distinguished  from  *  dynamics.' 
The  religious  type  of  Western  Asia  is  now  far 
more  clearly  marked  off  than  in  the  PhilosapJty 
from  that  of  Greece  and  Rome.  The  highly 
organised  theocracy  of  the  first  type  is  classed 
as  distinctively  industrial  rather  than  military. 
Thus  the  term  '  theologico-military,'  as  a  general 
name  for  the  old  order,  loses  its  typical  value, 
though  it  is  never  quite  discarded.  '  Progressive ' 
took  the  place  of  'conservative'  polytheism, 
Comte  now  finds,  precisely  through  the  superior 
position  gained  in  the  West  by  the  military  class. 
This  Avas  at  most  adumbrated  in  the  'funda- 
mental work.'  In  the  Philosophy y  the  'revolu- 
tionary transition'  essentially  kept  in  view  con- 
sisted only  of  the  five  modern  centuries  from  the 

SO 


THE   RELIGION   OF   HUMANITY 

end  of  the  thirteenth.  In  the  Polity ^  the  analogy 
of  the  modern  West  to  ancient  Greece  being 
more  clearly  seen,  the  break-up  of  the  old  order 
is  found  to  occupy  (with  intermediate  reactions) 
thirty  centuries  from  the  Homeric  age.  If  the 
unfairness  to  the  ' critical'  periods  has  become 
intensified,  the  insight  into  their  analogies  has 
deepened.  There  is  added  further  a  remarkable 
speculation  on  prehistoric  man.  Before  the  typi- 
cal theocracy,  Comte  places  a  kind  of  fetishistic 
Golden  Age,  in  which  man  felt  himself  at  one 
with  nature,  conceived  as  universally  animated. 
An  interesting  suggestion  is  thrown  out  that  it 
was  at  this  stage  that  animals  were  first  domesti- 
cated. Man,  being  then  less  removed  from  them 
in  intelligence  and  sympathy,  could  put  himself 
with  more  spontaneity  in  relation  with  them. 
The  period  of  force  and  dominance  came  later. 
Had  it  been  necessary  to  begin  by  violent 
subjugation,  no  taming  could  ever  have  been 
ejBfected. 

These,  however,  are  relatively  subordinate  ^^ 
developments.  Both  in  method  and  in  doctrine, 
Comte's  later  phase  is  marked  by  one  unquestion- 
able advance  of  the  highest  scientific  generality. 
At  first  Sociology  was  conceived  by  him  as  the 
supreme  science.     He  held  it  to  be  dependent  on 

51 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

Biology  as  the  next  in  order  in  the  hierarchy. 
From  Biology  (or  a  special  department  of  it) 
sociological  laws  must  be  deduced.  He  had  seen, 
however,  from  the  first,  that  Sociology  is  not 
wholly  thus  dependent.  It  has  a  method  and  a 
doctrine  of  its  own :  namely,  the  historical  method 
and  the  law  of  the  three  states.  But  this  brings 
into  relief  another  aspect  of  the  individual  man. 
By  the  time  he  had  completed  the  Cours  de  Philo- 
sophie  Positive,  Comte  perceived  the  necessity 
of  a  revision,  as  he  told  Mill  in  their  correspon- 
dence. Hitherto  the  individual  had  not  been 
explicitly  considered  at  all,  except  as  a  biological 
organism.  This  point  of  view  he  now  perceived 
to  be  even  more  inadequate  than  he  had  thought. 
Individuality  had  seemed  at  first  to  be  a  mere 
biological  notion,  and  then  to  be  effaced  under  the 
conception  of  a  social  unity.  From  Comte's  later 
point  of  view  the  individual  person  in  the  full 
sense  can  be  restored  as  an  object  of  science,  not 
indeed  as  a  unit  that  enters  into  society,  but  as 
determined  by  sociological  laws.  There  is  a  true 
science  of  man  as  individual ;  but  it  is  posterior, 
not  prior,  to  Sociology.  To  this  science  Comte 
gave  the  name  of  Morality,  making  it  the  seventh 
in  his  hierarchy.  Moral  science  being  conceived 
as  supreme,  all  below  must  be  ordered  from  its 

52 


THE   RELIGION   OF   HUMANITY 

point  of  view.  With  this  conception  there 
naturally  goes  (according  to  his  social  scheme) 
the  position  that  the  philosophers  or  priests  are,  / 
above  all,  to  be  moral  teachers.  Being  the 
educators  of  the  community,  they  will  direct 
practice  from  the  ethical  point  of  view,  to  which 
all  intellectual  pursuits  can  now  more  definitely 
than  ever  be  subordinated.  '^ 

Theoretically,  it  must  be  noted  that  Comte's  :^ 
new  science  is  properly  not  ethics,  but  psychology 
of  the  individual.  For  such  a  science,  his  insight 
into  its  true  relation  to  sociology  is  undoubtedly 
of  immense  importance;  but  he  failed  to  dis- 
tinguish it  from  moral  philosophy,  which  is  not 
the  same  thing.  Just  as  he  does  not  discuss 
philosophically  the  criterion  of  scientific  know- 
ledge, but  takes  it  for  granted,  so  he  does  not 
discuss  the  criterion  of  action,  but  supposes  it  to 
emerge  as  a  matter  of  course  from  his  theoretical 
'moral  science.'  He  has,  indeed,  an  ethical 
doctrine,  but  it  is  nowhere  critically  justified. 

His  ethical  principle  is  Love  or  Altruism.  The 
supreme  precept  of  his  morality  is  *Live  for 
others.'  Sympathetic  as  well  as  selfish  feelings, 
he  finds,  are  in  fact  innate  in  man  though  they 
are  weaker.  In  the  stages  of  human  history,  in 
spite  of  this  weakness,  altruism  slowly  gets  the 

53 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

better  of  egoism.  Taking  the  historical  view  as 
sufficient,  and  passing  over  'critical'  questions 
about  the  proof  for  the  individual  conscience, 
supposed  autonomous,  and  claiming  the  right  to 
give  or  refuse  its  assent  according  to  the  reason 
of  the  case,  he  goes  straight  to  the  practical  social 
question.  The  principle  granted,  as  he  thinks  it 
cannot  but  be,  how  is  it  to  be  brought  to  bear 
systematically  on  every  action  ?  His  answer  is, 
by  a  religion, — the  Religion  of  Humanity.  On 
Humanity  as  the  highest  form  of  life  upon  earth, 
the  *  Great  Being'  of  the  planet,  each  person 
depends  for  all  that  he  is  and  does.  Humanity, 
we  have  seen,  is  an  organism  in  a  higher  than  the 
biological  sense.  Its  continuity  is  that  of  history 
and  not  of  merely  organic  life.  It  is  a  real 
providence,  in  distinction  from  the  imaginary 
supra-mundane  providence  of  the  theologians. 
Thus  it  becomes  for  us  the  supreme  object  of 
devotion.  Through  the  graduated  unities  of  family 
first,  then  city  or  country,  the  individual  rises  to 
the  conception  of  the  highest  real  being  known  to 
him,  having  a  life  in  the  past  and  in  the  future 
that  far  transcends  the  mere  present.  Humanity, 
then,  can  become  the  object  of  a  cult,  of  which 
the  devotion  to  incarnate  god§)  or  goddesses  was 
an  adumbration.     Of  this  cult  the  founder  of  the 

54 


THE   RELIGION   OF  HUMANITY 

religion  proceeded  to  draw  up  the  outlines  and  a 
considerable  part  of  the  details.  j- 

The  new  religion  is  the  '  Religion  of  Humanity ' 
not  only  in  the  sense  that  its  practice  issues  in  the 
service  of  man,  but  also  in  the  sense  that  it  is 
destined  to  become  finally  the  religion  of  the 
human  race.  From  its  beginnings  in  the  central 
people  of  Western  Europe,  where  it  is  directly  the 
heir  of  Catholic  monotheism,  it  will  spread  over 
the  rest  of  the  world,  aiding  the  populations  that 
have  remained  polytheist  or  fetishist  to  rise  to  the 
stage  of  positivity  without  the  painful  theological 
and  metaphysical  transition  that  has  been 
necessary  in  the  historic  past.  Agreement  having 
been  arrived  at  intellectually,  ^he  religion  will  ' 
aim  at  the  systematic  cultivation  of  the  sym- 
pathetic feelings  by  exciting  emotions  of  love 
and  gratitude.  The  cult,  in  the  definitive  order^ 
will  be  both  public  and  private.  Woman  as 
domestic  goddess  will  be  the  object  of  the  private 
cult.  In  its  public  form,  the  adoration  of 
Humanity  will  be  organised  in  a  series  of  feasts 
dedicated  to  the  constituent  elements  and  stages 
of  man's  life  impersonally  conceived,  the  private 
cult  being  directed  rather  to  personal  objects. 
The  well-known  Positivist  Calendar  is  intended  I 
only  to  prepare  the  way  for  this  definitive  form  ' 

55 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

of '  Sociolatry.'  The  months  and  weeks  and  days 
of  the  provisional  calendar  are  dedicated  to  the 
great  names,  theoretical  and  practical,  that  stand 
for  all  the  progressive  movements  from  the '  initial 
Theocracy '  to  the  modern  '  Republic  of  the  West,' 
consisting  of  the  *five  advanced  populations,' 
French,  Italian,  Spanish,  British,  and  Germanic. 
The  dating  to  be  brought  into  use  in  substitution 
for  the  preceding  era  of  Europe  is  in  years  of  the 
'  great  crisis/  the  opening  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion in  1789  being  taken  as  the  beginning. 

I  do  not  propose  here  to  give  any  account  of 
the  hierarchical  order  to  be  imposed  on  the 
society  of  the  future.  As  a  scheme  to  be  adopted 
outright,  few  Positivists  now  accept  it ;  though,  if 
not  taken  too  literally,  others  as  well  as  Positivists 
may  find  in  it  suggestions  of  great  value  con- 
cerning the  stages  of  an  encyclopaedic  education 
and  the  practical  ordering  of  life.  I  pass  on  to  give 
a  few  points  from  Comte's  last  work,  the  Synthese 
Subjective,  which  represents  in  some  respects  the 
highest  stage  of  his  thought. 

i      No  more  than  the  rest   of  his  later  writings 

I  is  it  a  reversal  of  his   earlier   doctrine.     It  is, 

/  as   he  maintained,  a  completion  of  it  from  the 

']  other  term   of  the  series.      The  stages  in  his 

1  hierarchy  of  the  sciences  he  still  holds   to   be 

56 


THE  RELIGION  OF   HUMANITY 

objectively  given;    but  his  view  all  along  was 
that  they  lead  up  to  man  as  the  end.    Every-  / 
thing,  then,  has  to  be  gone  over  again  from  the  "> 
human  point    of    view   when    this    has  at  last 
become  positive.     The  sciences  in  general,  objec-  ^ 
tive  though  they  be,  were  never  supposed  to  be 
other  than  '  relative ' ;  and  this  means  finally  that 
they  are  relative   to  man.     That  is  to  say,  no 
'objective    synthesis'    is    attainable.      The  only 
possible  synthesis  is  'subjective/     This  does  not 
mean  that  it  is  merely  individual.    A  subjective 
synthesis  is  attainable  from  the   point  of  view 
of  humanity  and  not  merely  of  some  particular 
thinker.    But  no  synthesis  is  objectively  universal. 
The  objectivity  that  exists  is  only  that  of  abstract 
science,  and  carries  with  it  no  knowledge  of  the   ^ 
whole.  "^ 

.  This  is,  I  think,  a  fair  representation  of  Comte's 
thought.  He  did  not  live  to  work  it  out  in  full, 
but  in  the  only  volume  published  of  what  was  to 
be  a  third  series  of  writings  (after  the  Philosophy 
and  the  Polity),  he  applied  it  to  mathematics, 
always  in  his  view  the  fundamental  science  both 
as  regards  method  and  doctrine.  The  most 
remarkable  part  of  this  volume  is  the  opening 
section,  in  which  the  Religion  of  Humanity  is 
extended  to  the  universe — or  at  least  to  that 
57 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

portion  of  it  with  which  man  is  in  effective  rela- 
tion— by  what  is  confessedly  poetic  fiction.  The 
*  fictions '  of  the  theologians,  according  to  Comte, 
were  of  course  not  deliberate.  Primeval  fetishism, 
the  fundamental  form  of  '  theology,'  by  which 
objects  were  endowed  not  only  with  will  and 
feeling,  but  with  intelligence,  was  a  spontaneous 
belief.  Like  later  theologies  in  their  degree,  it 
served  the  purpose  of  giving  to  human  curiosity 
a  sufficient  stimulus  till  the  formulation  of  posi- 
tive laws  could  be  substituted  for  the  futile  search 
after  'causes.'  The  positive  philosopher,  how- 
ever, when  the  whole  series  of  stages  has  been 
traversed,  may  deliberately  restore  in  the  con- 
templation of  nature  what  he  knows  to  be  a 
purely  subjective  and  human  mode  of  thought. 
First,  the  birthplace  and  home  of  man  may  be 
endowed  with  sympathy  and  will  for  human 
good.  An  imaginative  extension  of  this  hypo- 
thesis makes  the  Earth  the  'Great  Fetish,'  as 
Man  is  the  'Great  Being.'  Further,  to  abstract 
laws  we  may  assign  as  their  seat  Space,  which 
thus  becomes  the  '  Great  Medium,'  imagined  not 
indeed  as  actively  volitional  like  the  Earth,  but 
as  benevolent.  Space,  the  Earth,  and  Man  form 
the  Positivist  Trinity.  The  other  planets  of  the 
solar  system  may  be  regarded  in  like  manner  as 

58 


THE   RELIGION   OF   HUMANITY 

animated,  and  the  Sun  and  Moon  especially  may- 
be made  the  subject  of  poetic  personifications. 

Unaware,  probably,  of  the  remarkable  coin- 
cidences between  these  suggestions  and  the 
personifications  in  the  last  Act  of  Prometheus 
Unbound,  Comte  leaves  them  to  the  poets  of  the 
future.  By  Shelley,  it  is  worth  observing,  not 
only  these  *  fictions,'  which  with  the  poet  were 
of  course  no  less  fictions  than  with  the  philo- 
sopher, but  many  of  Comte's  distinctive  theoretic 
ideas  were  anticipated.  The  glorified  humanity 
of  the  future  is  conceived  not  in  terms  of  '  atomic 
individualism,'  but  as  the  Great  Being — Man,  not 
men.  To  develop  this  further  might  seem  to  the 
reader  fanciful;  but  the  comparison  was  worth 
making  in  order  to  show  how  easily  the  general 
conception  of  a  Religion  of  Humanity  can  be 
cleared  of  what  is  merely  personal  in  it.  And, 
indeed,  Comte  himself,  in  this  last  stage,  is  visibly 
getting  beyond  anything  that  may  appear  to  us 
sectional  in  his  choice  of  models.  From  the 
typical  mediaeval  conception  of  the  world,  with 
its  agency  of  external  spirits  acting  on  matter, 
nothing  could  be  more  remote. 


59 


CHAPTER    VI 

mill's  politics,  economics,  and  ethics 

/^"  It  has  been  mentioned  that  Mill  derived  from 
Comte  the  Inverse  Deductive  or  Historical 
Method,  which  he  finally  came  to  regard  as  the 
only  possible  method  for  the  more  complex 
investigations  in  the  science  of  society.  This  is 
set  forth  in  the  sixth  book  of  the  Logic  ('  On  the 
Logic  of  the  Moral  Sciences').  At  an  earlier 
stage  of  his  political  thinking  he  had  already 
received  an  impression  from  Comte,  and  had 
come  under  the  influence  of  the  Saint-Simonians, 
as  may  be  seen  in  the  letters  to  his  friend 
Gustavo  d'Eichthal,  who  was  a  member  of  the 
group.  The  contact  was  one  of  those  that  con- 
tributed to  modify  his  Benthamism,  others  being 
his  relations  with  what  may  be  called  generally 
the  counter-revolutionary  movement  in  England. 
Here,  as  in  France,  recognition  that  errors  had  in 
fact  been  swept  away  was  accompanied  in  many 
60 


MILL'S  POLITICS,  ECONOMICS,  AND  ETHICS 

educated  minds  by  a  disposition  to  find,  mainly 
in  the  order  that  had  been  singled  out  as  the 
object  of  revolutionary  hate,  something  more 
noble  and  beautiful  than  that  which  seemed  to 
be  taking  its  place.  The  structure  of  Catholic 
feudalism  and  the  mediaeval  Church  attracted  not 
only  theological  reactionaries,  but  some  who,  like 
Carlyle,  saw  that  the  old  system  of  belief  was 
irreparably  destroyed.  It  is  noteworthy  that 
Hegel,  for  all  his  Prussian  conservatism,  never 
took  this  direction,  but  sought  a  true  organic 
base,  as  against  mere  anarchism,  not  essentially 
in  a  Church  at  all,  but  in  the  classical  or  the 
modern  national  State.  This,  as  an  organic 
order,  had  not  impressed  any  of  the  minds  by 
which  Mill  was  especially  influenced.  And,  as 
he  had  never  abandoned  what  Comte  called  the 
*  revolutionary  metaphysics,'  the  effect  of  the  new 
influences  was  not  one  of  unqualified  attraction. 
He  was  willing  to  find  something  impressive  in 
the  mediaeval  past  that  periods  like  the  eighteenth 
century  had  lost,  but  the  critical  spirit  remained 
alert.  He  found  already  in  Comte's  early 
Politique  Positive  an  excess  of  system,  and 
remarked  on  the  special  favour  he  shows  to  the 
Middle  Ages  as  contrasted  with  his  unfairness  to 
classical  antiquity.  Mill  himself  might  come  to 
6i 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

be  over-impressed  later  by  the  'rehabilitation  of 
the  Middle  Ages ' ;  but  the  large  part  played  by 
Greek  studies  in  his  early  education  gave  him 
the  superiority  over  Comte  in  actual  knowledge 
concerning  the  other  term  of  the  contrast.  To 
the  Saint-Simonians,  with  their  zeal  for  industrial 
'production/  he  insisted  on  the  disadvantages 
that  accompany  the  success  in  it  in  England, 
which  they  were  disposed  to  envy.  A  profound 
egoism  of  tone,  not  merely  in  formed  men  of  the 
world,  but  in  young  men,  who  in  France  and 
Germany  are  usually  full  of  generous  enthusiasm, 
is  what  he  finds  to  result  from  the  predominance 
of  the  life  of  commerce.  With  the  aspirations  of 
the  Saint-Simonians  to  a  new  order  of  society, 
and  even  to  a  new  religion,  he  was  at  the  same 
time  completely  in  sympathy,  though  already 
afraid  of  the  sectarian  spirit  which  would  try  to 
impress  on  entire  communities  a  single  direction 
to  be  fixed  by  the  doctrine  of  a  school. 

Before  the  time  of  his  correspondence  with 
Comte,  he  had  found  himself  obliged  to  give  up 
the  rigorous  position  of  his  father,  set  forth  in  the 
article  on  'Government.'  Macaulay's  attack  in 
the  Edinburgh  Review  (1829)  had  convinced  him 
that  what  he  afterwards  called  the  'geometrical 
method'  of  direct  deduction  from  principles  of 
62 


MILL'S  POLITICS,  ECONOMICS,  AND  ETHICS 

human  nature  cannot  give  valid  propositions 
applicable  to  the  whole  of  a  society.  The  purely 
experimental  or  '  chemical '  method  (as  he  called 
it  later)  of  Macaulay  is,  however,  equally  invalid. 
Specific  experience  is  here  too  complicated  to 
permit  the  application  of  the  inductive  methods. 
The  method  has  to  be  some  kind  of  scientific ' 
deduction.  With  abstract  Political  Economy  he 
had  no  special  difficulty.  If  men  are  assumed  to 
be  actuated  only  by  one  class  of  motives — in 
this  case,  those  that  refer  to  wealth — then  the 
problem  is  sufficiently  simplified  to  be  treated 
in  the  manner  of  a  deductive  science  like 
astronomy  or  physics.  Having  reached  con- 
clusions hypothetically  valid,  we  can  correct  them 
by  restoring  the  data  provisionally  set  aside. 
When,  however,  all  the  phenomena  of  a  society 
are  to  be  taken  into  account  at  once,  the  con- 
sensus of  its  elements  deprives  us  of  the  resource 
furnished  by  this  kind  of  abstraction.  For  the 
problem  of  method  thus  left  over,  he  found  the 
solution,  as  has  been  said,  in  Comte.  With  some 
reserves  intended  to  conciliate  English  prejudice 
regarding  Comte's  use  of  the  term  '  theo- 
logical,' he  also  accepted  his  doctrine  expressed 
in  the  'law  of  the  three  states.'  Further  than 
this  it  cannot  be  said  that  he  ever  proceeded  in 
63 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

Sociology  as  a  science.  The  later  developments 
of  his  own  thought  in  its  application  to  society 
were  in  Economics,  in  Politics  considered  as  a 
practical  art  depending  to  some  extent  on  philo- 
sophical principles,  and  in  the  theory  of  Ethics. 

A  project  referred  to  in  the  correspondence 
with  Comte,  but  not  carried  out,  was  a  work  on 
the  science  Mill  called  Ethology,  or  the  formation 
of  human  character,  regarded  as  derivative  from 
Psychology,  or  the  science  of  the  elementary  laws 
of  mind.  This,  in  Mill's  view,  would  have  been 
a  step  on  the  way  to  a  scientific  Sociology.  The 
lines  on  which  it  was  conceived  were,  however, 
'individualistic'  in  the  sense  in  which  Comte 
was  now  fully  aware  of  his  own  advance  on 
individualism.  Mill  came  to  perceive  that  his 
scheme  was,  at  least  for  the  present,  impracticable, 
and  turned  instead  to  the  subject  of  Political 
Economy,  with  the  development  of  which,  up 
to  the  point  it  had  reached,  he  was  perfectly 
familiar.  Here  again  there  was  a  divergence 
from  Comte,  Avho,  though  not  condemning  out- 
right Mill's  project  of  a  treatise  on  economics,  in 
reality  thought  the  abstract  science  of  the 
economists  of  very  slight  value.  He  had  already 
expressed  himself  to  this  eflfect.  The  separate 
treatment  of  the  phenomena  of  wealth,  in   his 

64 


MILL'S  POLITICS,  ECONOMICS,  AND  ETHICS 

view,  was  the  source  of  antithetic  errors :  in- 
dustrial laissez-faire  on  the  one  side,  and  social- 
istic schemes  for  nationalising  the  instruments 
of  production  on  the  other.  The  only  kind  of 
social  science  that  could  henceforth  give  any  true 
guidance  was  a  science  of  social  phenomena  in 
their  totahty.  Mill,  however,  seeing  no  clear 
light  in  this  direction,  and  retaining  his  belief 
in  economics  within  its  own  limits,  now  began 
his  second  great  treatise,  the  Principles  of 
Political  Economy,  which  appeared  in  1848. 
What  gave  the  work  its  essential  interest  for 
him  was  the  hope,  by  application  of  the  new 
doctrines  attained  since  Adam  Smith  by  Ricardo 
and  Malthus,  to  point  the  way  to  social  reform. 
In  particular,  the  doctrine  of  Malthus  on  popula- 
tion was  applied  by  him  to  refute  despairing 
views  as  to  the  future  of  the  labouring  classes. 
Population,  it  is  true,  by  its  unchecked  increase 
tends  to  press  on  the  means  of  subsistence,  and 
thus  to  reduce  the  remuneration  of  the  labourer 
to  no  more  than  will  support  life;  but  the 
standard  of  living  can  be  raised,  and  the  increase 
of  population  brought  under  control  by  prudence.^it^ 
All  through.  Mill  showed  himself  anxious  to 
mark  the  limitations  of  the  economic  view.  If 
the  laws  of  production  of  wealth  are  in  the  main 
E  6s 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

fixed,  the  laws  of  its  distribution  differ  according 
to  the  customs  and  the  social  order  of  different 
societies,  and  a  better  order  may  be  thought  out 
than  that  which  exists.  The  present  distribution 
is  so  unjust  that  even  a  scheme  of  communistic 
equality  would  be  preferable ;  and,  if  communism 
can  be  reconciled  with  the  free  play  of  individu- 
ality, this  may  be  the  ideal  order  to  be  realised 
in  the  future.  Mill,  however,  will  not  resign 
individual  freedom.  He  puts  forward  no  scheme 
of  his  own  that  can  be  called  properly  socialistic. 
In  spite  of  the  new  influences  under  which  he 
had  come,  his  work  could  in  fact  be  regarded  as 
a  text-book  of  the  'classicar  political  economy, 
for  which  laissez-faire  was  the  general  rule  ad- 
mitting only  of  occasional  exceptions. 

Another  point  of  difference  between  Mill  and 
Comte  related  to  the  position  and  the  mental 
qualities  of  women.  On  biological  grounds, 
Comte  argues  that  women  are  intellectually  in- 
ferior to  men.  This  Mill  cannot  admit.  All 
actual  differences  are  to  be  traced  to  circum- 
stances, such  as  mode  of  education,  opinion  of 
society  constantly  impressed,  and  so  forth.  No 
legal  or  political  difference  ought  to  exist.  This 
was  afterwards  the  thesis  maintained  with  passion 
in  The  Subjection  of  Women  (1869).  Mill  came 
66 


MILL^S  POLITICS,  ECONOMICS,  AND  ETHICS 

to  think  later  that  in  the  correspondence  he  had 
made  too  many  concessions.  The  deep  cleft, 
however,  between  his  view  and  Comte's  is  mani- 
fest. The  weakness  of  his  position  controversially 
is  on  the  biological  side.  He  will  hardly  admit 
at  any  time,  whether  in  discussing  sex  or  race, 
that  any  mental  difference  whatever  can  be  trace- 
able to  the  organism.  His  strength  is  in  the 
feeling  that  justice  between  the  sexes,  as  in  every 
other  relation,  implies  a  certain  equality  as  its 
condition.  Economic  dependence  legally  enforced, 
for  example,  is  incompatible  with  this.  In  com- 
menting on  the  deification  of  women  in  the 
Positive  Polity  as  the  '  moral  providence,'  he 
remarks  that  Comte  concedes  to  them  everything 
except  justice.  Comte's  view  about  the  impor- 
tance of  the  relative  superiorities  on  each  side 
had  to  some  extent  changed,  but  his  practical 
inference  as  regards  social  institutions  remained 
the  same. 

In  the  sphere  of  politics,  each  point  in  turn 
'could  be  treated  as  a  case  of  antithesis  between 
the  two  thinkers.  Mill's  Representative  Oovern- 
ment  (1861),  for  instance,  takes  up  the  problem 
of  developing  precisely  that  political  system  which 
Comte  regarded  not  only  as  transitional  but  as 
already  superseded.    For  Comte,  the  way  to  the 

67 


COMTE  AND   MILL 

ideal  order  is  henceforth  through  a  series  of 
dictatorships.  Democracy  as  a  permanent  system 
is  anarchical.  Now  Mill,  while  he  was  always 
a  democrat,  came  to  fear  rather  that  the  rule  of 
the  numerical  majority  would  tend  to  suppress 
individual  variation.  Hence  he  shows  himself 
eager  to  adopt  any  device  that  may  be  proposed 
for  reducing  this  danger.  Parliamentary  institu-^ 
tions  in  general  he  accepts  above  all  because  of 
the  educational  value  of  voting  and  discussion 
for  the  individual  citizen.  A  benevolent  des- 
potism, though  not  to  be  condemned  in  all  times 
and  places,  since  the  historical  relativity  of 
institutions  must  be  recognised,  would  not  be 
the  best  form  of  government  even  if  it  were  the 
most  efficient.  Whether  the  particular  devices 
taken  up  b)'  Mill  are  such  as  to  promote  the  ends 
he  had  at  heart  is  a  disputed  question;  but 
events  have  not  refuted  either  his  own  doctrine 
or  that  of  the  school  from  which  he  sprang,  as 
far  as  their  hopes  lay  in  the  development  of  a 
parliamentary  as  distinguished  from  a  dictatorial 
system. 

I  Mill's  most  famous  contribution  to  the  defence 
|of  individuality  is  of  course  the  Liberty  (1859). 
I  This  is  first  of  all  a  philosophical  defence  of 
j  freedom  in  the  expression  of  opinion,  especially 

68 


MILL'S  POLITICS,  ECONOMICS,  AND  ETHICS 

when  opposed  to  popular  orthodoxy.  Here  at 
last  Mill  was  able  to  plead  with  effect,  as  he 
had  long  desired,  for  intellectual  liberty  against 
the  silencing,  by  social  intolerance,  of  open  dis- 
belief in  Christianity.  In  an  often-quoted  passage 
where  the  defects  of  Christian  as  contrasted  with 
the  best  pagan  ethics  are  insisted  on,  he  gave  an 
illustration  of  the  freedom  he  claimed.  The 
persuasiveness  and  eloquence  of  the  writing 
helped  to  win  the  cause,  in  England,  of  free 
thought  and  speech.  Although  some  who  agree 
in  Mill's  general  conclusion  do  not  find  the  proof 
as  stringent  as  might  be  desired,  none  deny  the 
effectiveness  of  the  plea  at  the  time;  and  the 
Liberty  has  taken  classical  rank  with  Milton's 
argument  for  unlicensed  printing.  To  a  logical 
persecutor,  doubtless,  neither  the  Liberty  nor  the 
Areopagitica  would  carry  conviction;  but  both 
came  at  a  time  when  the  public  mind  was  slowly 
becoming  more  sensitive  to  the  interests  of  truth 
and  justice;  and  the  literary  rather  than 
technically  philosophical  clothing  of  the  argu- 
ments did  not  tell  against  them. 

What  has  perhaps  been  most  commented  on 

in  the  Liberty  is  the  contention  for  limitations  on 

the  control  exercised  by  society  over  the  actions 

of   the    individual.      Not    merely    freedom    of 

69 


COMTE  AND   MILL 

I  thought,  but  practical  '  experiments  in  Hving,' 
ought,  in  Mill's  view,  to  be  encouraged  as  against 
the  tendency,  which  he  feared  in  modern  civilisa- 
tion and  in  political  democracy,  to  an  enforced 
uniformity.  Here  especially  we  see  the  thinker 
who  had  shown  himself  so  sensitive  in  youth 
to  the  influences  of  the  counter-revolution. 
Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  we  must  remember, 
were  in  reaction  first  against  the  European 
tyranny  by  which  the  Revolution  was  followed, 
and  had  cared  much  less  about  temporary 
anarchy.  Again,  through  social  interactions 
which    it  would    take    long    to    discuss.    Mill's 

i  argument  against  pressing  the  coercion  of  public 
opinion  too  far  has  been  taken  up  by  later  con- 
servative thinkers.  Hence  this  side  of  his 
thought,  by  enabling  both  parties  to  appeal  to 
it,  has  indirectly  helped  to  strengthen  the 
authority  of  his  name. 

The  principal  statement  of  Mill's  ethics  is  the 
Utilitarianism,  which  appeared  first  in  Frasers 
Magazine  in  1861,  and  was  separately  published 
in  1863.  While  guarding  himself  against  what 
he  thinks  the  errors  of  Comte's  teaching  in  so 
far  as  it  overrides  the  claims  of  liberty  and 
individuahty.  Mill  here  in  effect  adopts  the 
Religion  of  Humanity.    The  supreme  end  of  action 

70 


MILL'S  POLITICS,  ECONOMICS,  AND  ETHICS 

is  human  happiness,  under  which  is  included 
(as  also  by  Comte)  the  happiness  of  other  sentient 
beings  in  relation  with  man.  Of  the  properly 
philosophical  positions  connected  with  acceptance 
of  this  as  the  end,  Mill  attempts  such  proof  as 
he  thinks  them  capable  of.  There  is  an  express 
argument  against  the  '  transcend  en  talis  t '  view 
that  justice  is  irreducible  to  utility  (or  con- 
duciveness  to  happiness),  and  can  only  be  derived 
from  an  immediate  intuition  of  what  is  univer- 
sally obligatory  without  reference  to  ends.  The 
feeling  for  justice,  like  other  moral  sentiments, 
is  found  to  have  its  origin  in  assignable  circum- 
stances of  human  history,  and  to  acquire  its 
peculiar  character  in  the  individual  from  the 
type  of  moral  education  that  has  been  determined 
by  those  circumstances.  In  the  case  of  the 
Utilitarianism  as  of  the  Liberty,  those  who  are 
in  general  agreement  with  Mill's  conclusions  have 
not  found  his  proofs  in  all  respects  satisfactory. 
What  has  been  most  frequently  disputed  from 
one  side  or  the  other  is  the  modification  attempted 
by  him  in  Bentham's  definition  or  description  of 
happiness.  For  Bentham,  happiness  consists  of 
pleasures  quantitatively  estimated,  pains  being 
deducted  as  negative.  The  net  sum  —  the 
greatest  possible  happiness — is   the   end.     Mill 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

(after  Plato  in  the  Republic)  proposes  to  dis- 
tinguish pleasures  as  also  qualitatively  higher  or 
lower.  Yet  happiness  is  still  regarded  by  him 
as  a  sum.  Thus,  as  opponents  have  pointed  out, 
all  the  apparent  simplicity  of  Benthamism  is 
destroyed,  while  its  principle  is  not  expressly 
abandoned.  Indeed,  Mill  incidentally  accepts  the 
most  rigorous  Benthamic  view  in  the  admission 
that  the  end  is  to  maximise  the  sum  without 
reference  to  its  distribution.  An  adherent  of 
utilitarianism  like  Professor  Bain  holds  therefore 
that  it  would  have  been  better  tactics  if  Mill  had 
declined  to  commit  himself  to  any  but  the 
broadest  statement  of  the  utilitarian  position, 
which  is  not  specially  Benthamic.  The  only 
difference  of  quality,  relative  to  ethics,  that  Bain 
can  admit,  is  the  difference  between  egoistic  and 
altruistic  feelings.  This  too  is  a  departure  from 
rigorous  Benthamism.  An  obvious  objection  to 
Mill's  use  of  the  principle  of  *  inseparable  associa- 
tion '  to  explain  the  origin  of  moral  sentiments 
is  that  this  seems  to  reduce  them  to  illusions 
destructible  by  analysis.  It  is  indeed  paradoxical 
that  Associationists,  having  shown  how,  for 
example,  the  love  of  money  arises  from  associa- 
tion of  means  with  the  ends  of  action,  till  at  last 
they  come  to  be  substituted  for  the  ends  them- 

72 


MILL'S  POLITICS,  ECONOMICS,  AND  ETHICS 

selves  as  the  object  of  desire,  should  complacently 
argue  that  the  regard  for  moral  virtue  is  psycho- 
logically explicable  in  the  same  way.  Mill  is 
conscious  of  the  difficulty,  and  in  one  place  gives 
an  answer  by  pointing  out  that  love  of  virtue 
is  so  far  natural  to  man  as  not  to  be  dissolved 
by  analysis  when  it  has  been  acquired;  but  on 
the  whole  his  hopes  were  so  much  in  educability 
that  he  preferred  to  dwell  on  the  power  of 
teachers  and  legislators  to  produce  by  public  or 
private  education  any  type  of  character  they 
choose.  Since  he  wrote,  ethical  discussion  has 
taken  new  forms  through  the  entrance  into 
the  controversy  of  factors  like  'evolution'  and 
the  'social  medium.'  Practically  innate  moral 
sentiments,  according  to  the  Spencerian  theory 
of  evolution,  have  their  source  in  the  experience 
of  the  race,  though  the  experience  of  the  in- 
dividual cannot  wholly  account  for  them.  Again, 
from  the  Positivist  or  the  Hegelian  point  of  view  J 
if  man  is  a  social  being  before  he  is  properly  man,! 
the  attempt  to  derive  the  profoundest  moralf 
sentiments  from  an  explicit  mental  process  inl 
the  individual  is  an  inversion  of  the  true  order,  i 
All  this,  however,  belongs  to  the  psychology  of 
ethics  rather  than  to  ethics  proper.  The  rational 
problem  of  ends  and  criteria  remains.      Of  this 

73 


COMTE  AND   MILL 

the  new  factors  furnish  no  ready-made  solution ; 
but  only,  like  the  Associationist  psychology  itself 
at  an  earlier  stage,  contribute  materials  for  the 
ethical  philosopher.  It  may  be  said  of  Mill  that 
he  was  primarily  a  philosopher  or  logician  rather 
than  a  psychologist,  and  in  his  time  cleared  the 
discussion  of  many  irrelevancies. 


74 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE   ESSAYS   ON   RELIGION 

The  year  1873  saw  the  publication  of  Mill's  Auto- 
biography. In  1874  appeared  the  posthumous 
essays  on  '  Nature/  '  The  Utility  of  Religion/  and 
'  Theism/  Of  these  the  first  two  were  composed 
during  the  period  between  1850  and  1858,  to 
which  belongs  also  the  composition  of  the  Liberty 
and  the  Utilitarianism.  The  third  was  written 
much  later,  and  had  been  very  imperfectly  re- 
vised. It  was  not  the  kind  of  work  that  had 
been  expected  either  by  Mill's  friends  or  by  his 
opponents ;  yet  it  is  not  really  inconsistent  with 
anything  he  had  written  elsewhere  on  religion. 

While  Mill  is  often  classed  as  having  the  type 
of  mind  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  essay  on 
Nature  contains  the  strongest  possible  attack  on 
a  favourite  abstraction  of  that  period.  Against 
every  attempt  to  find  moral  guidance  for  man 
in   nature   unmodified  by  human  agency,   Mill 

75 


COMTE  AND   MILL 

proclaims  war.  Natural  forces  act  in  ways  that 
would  be  regarded  as  involving  the  highest 
degree  of  criminality  in  human  agents.  When 
we  turn  to  man  himself,  we  find  that  what  is 
best  in  him  is  artificial,  being  the  comparatively 
late  product  of  culture.  '  Nature's  god '  and  the 
'noble  savage'  are  sophistic  fancies.  The  only 
morally  admissible  theory  of  Creation,  in  view  of 
the  facts  both  of  nature  and  of  human  history, 
is  that  the  Principle  of  Good  is  limited  by  ex- 
traneous conditions ;  that  not  otherwise  than  by 
struggle  with  the  powers  of  evil,  and  by  gradual 
growth,  could  the  moral  order  of  civilised  human 
life  be  attained. 

The  next  essay  starts  from  the  discussion  in 
the  work  entitled  Analysis  of  the  Influence  of 
Natural  Religion  on  the  Temporal  Happiness 
of  Mankind,  by '  Philip  Beauchamp '  (1822).  This 
is  now  known  to  have  been  written  by  George 
Grote,  with  assistance  from  the  fragmentary 
manuscripts  of  Bentham.  Its  conclusions  are 
completely  hostile  to  the  utility  of  theism,  and, 
by  implication,  of  Christianity.  Mill  thinks  that 
it  presses  many  parts  of  the  argument  too  hard ; 
and  his  own  view  allows  some  value  historically 
to  the  '  supernatural  sanction '  as  an  aid  to  ethics. 
In  the  end,  however,  he  points  out  the  danger  of 

76 


THE  ESSAYS   ON   RELIGION 

associating  sound  moral  precepts  with  doctrines 
intellectually  unsustainable,  and  for  himself  ex- 
plicitly accepts  the  Religion  of  Humanity,  not 
as  an  imperfect  substitute  for  the  supernatural 
religions,  but  as  equal  to  them  in  their  be&t, 
manifestations  and  superior  to  them  in  any  of 
their  others. 

The  essay  on  Theism  develops  the  thought 
expressed  incidentally  in  the  first  essay,  that,  not- 
withstanding the  spectacle  presented  by  nature, 
a  moral  theory  of  creation  is  admissible  on  the 
hypothesis  that  the  Deity  is  limited  in  power. 
The  limitation.  Mill  adds,  may  also  be  in  know- 
ledge, and  even  in  benevolence.  Yet,  if  there 
are  any  grounds  for  the  belief  in  such  a  creative 
God,  this  kind  of  theism  may  aid  and  fortify 
the  purely  human  religion  which,  with  or  with- 
out supernatural  sanctions,  he  cannot  doubt  is 
destined  to  be  the  Religion  of  the  Future. 

The  grounds  that  Mill  finds  for  this  hypothesis 
are  essentially  those  that  have  always  furnished  a 
basis  for  the  design-argument.  The  eye  appears 
to  have  been  made  for  seeing,  and  the  ear  for 
hearing.  The  Darwinian  theory,  he  recognises, 
cannot  be  disregarded  as  one  possible  explanation 
of  the  apparent  adaptations  of  organisms  to  their 
conditions;   yet  it  does  not  seem  to  him  to  be 

n 


COMTE  AND   MILL 

more  than  plausible  as  a  substitute  for  intelligent 
design.  On  the  whole,  a  creative  God  working 
on  matter  is,  he  contends,  still  the  theory  for 
which,  as  a  speculation,  most  can  be  said. 

Matter  is,  of  course,  taken  here  in  its  common- 
sense  meaning  as  something  real  and  opposed  to 
mind.  Mill,  however,  could  easily  have  adapted 
the  argument  to  his  own  idealism.  For  the  '  per- 
manent possibilities  of  sensation '  into  which 
matter  is  resolved  by  him  metaphysically  are 
not  to  be  supposed  correspondent  to  nothing  at 
all.  They  may  signify  some  non-rational  condi- 
tions of  the  manifestation  of  intelligence.  As  to 
the  nature  of  these  conditions,  Mill  does  not 
speculate.  All  that  is  necessary  for  him  is  that 
they  should  be  limiting  conditions.  His  creative 
Deity  is  clearly  not  the  Absolute.  He  may  be 
the  most  powerful  being  in  the  universe,  but  he 
is  not  to  be  identified  with  the  reality  of  the 
whole.  Mill,  as  was  noted  before,  does  not  regard 
his  own  idealism  as  a  possible  foundation  for 
ontology.  The  only  definite  use  he  makes  of  it 
is  to  show  that  it  leaves  room  for  a  belief  in  the 
natural  immortality  of  the  individual  soul.  That 
it  does  not  directly  prove  immortality  he  allows. 
At  the  same  time  he  points  out  that  mind, 
according   to    idealism,  has  a  higher   degree   of 

78 


THE   ESSAYS   ON   RELIGION 

reality  than  matter  as  phenomenally  known. 
Thus  it  may,  notwithstanding  anything  that  is 
proved  as  to  the  impermanence  of  material  com- 
binations, survive  the  organism  in  association 
with  which  it  has  been  temporarily  manifested. 

In  theism,  as  distinguished  from  idealism,  Mill 
finds  very  little  to  confirm  the  belief  in  immor- 
tality. The  most  that  can  be  made  out  is  that 
it  permits  the  hope  for  a  future  state  as  a  possi- 
bility. Generally  his  treatment  here  gives  ground 
for  the  view  that  he  would  like  to  discover  some 
residue  of  truth  in  the  doctrines  of  'natural 
theology,'  though  not  for  the  inference  that  he 
felt  any  need  of  them  himself.  In  pantheistic  or 
evolutionary  speculations  it  is  clear  that  he  felt 
no  interest.  Hence  he  remains  in  the  end  more 
in  sympathy  with  the  tenets  common  to  Chris- 
tian and  non-Christian  theists  than  Comte,  the 
fictions  of  whose  'subjective  synthesis'  have  a 
decided  affinity  with  the  monistic  ontology  which 
he  nevertheless  completely  repudiated.  And 
Comte,  with  all  his  admiration  for  the  Catholic 
type  of  life,  makes  no  such  concession  to  the 
claim  that  there  is  anything  unique  in  Christian 
ethics  as  is  made  by  Mill  in  the  section  of  his  last 
essay  which  he  devotes  to  '  Revelation.' 

To  whichever  side  our  sympathies  may  incline, 
79 


COMTE  AND   MILL 

both  philosophers  here  give  us  less  satisfaction 
than  we  have  intellectually  a  right  to  expect,  and 
point  to  something  beyond  themselves.  Hypo- 
theses or  fictions  may  be  permissible ;  but  in 
philosophy  we  ought  to  have  grounds  for  saying, 
as  Plato  did  of  his  myths,  that  the  meaning 
contained  in  them,  though  not  any  particular 
imagination  we  can  clothe  it  with,  is  the  truth  of 
things.  For  a  religion,  Comte's  dogmatic  asser- 
tions, whether  negative  or  positive,  seem  at  any 
rate  more  satisfying  than  Mill's  suspension  of 
judgment.  The  Positivist  '  subjective  immor- 
tality,' or  preservation  in  the  memory  of 
survivors,  for  example,  is  held  out  as  a  certainty. 
With  Mill  'objective  immortality'  is  indeed  a 
possibility,  as  it  was  not  for  Comte;  but  its 
realisation  is  quite  uncertain.  Yet  it  is  here 
rather  than  in  relation  to  personal  theism  that 
his  philosophical  principles  gave  him  tenable 
grounds  for  an  attitude  not  wholly  suspensory. 


80 


CHAPTER  VIII 

ASPECTS   OF   LATER   THOUGHT 

The  most  genuinely  philosophical  advance  made 
since  Comte  and  Mill  has  consisted  in  a 
renewed  eflbrt  to  lay  hold  of  the  traditional 
speculative  problems  they  had  in  different  degrees 
set  aside.  While  Mill  was  applying  destructive 
dialectic  to  the  conglomerate  constructions  of 
Hamilton  and  the  attenuated  Kantianism  of 
Mansel,  Herbert  Spencer,  with  even  less  direct 
knowledge  than  Mill  of  German  thought,  was 
working  out,  from  the  very  imperfect  version  of 
it  before  him,  a  metaphysical  theory  not  wanting 
in  universality.  Taking  the  Absolute  of  Hamilton 
and  Mansel  seriously,  and  ignoring  their  Christian 
theism,  he  put  forth  as  the  prelude  to  a  system 
of  scientific  philosophy  the  ontological  doctrine 
that  that  which  lies  behind  the  phenomena 
accessible  to  science  is  a  demonstrably  positive 
but  at  the  same  time  demonstrably  unknowable 
F  8i 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

real  Being.  The  unknowable  is  the  object  of 
what  is  permanent  in  the  religious  sentiment, 
of  which  the  essence  is  the  consciousness  of  an 
insoluble  mystery.  This  was  as  far  as  Spencer 
carried  metaphysics;  but  later  thinkers,  not 
acquiescing  in  his  resignation  of  further  search 
into  reality  as  distinguished  from  appearance, 
have  tried  again,  with  or  without  aid  from  newer 
scientific  ideas,  to  grasp  the  whole.  Some  of 
these  attempts  could  easily  be  brought  into 
relation  with  the  ideas  of  Comte  and  Mill  last 
discussed.  An  atheological  doctrine  of  personal 
immortality,  for  example,  though  it  was  not 
Mill's  actual  belief,  has  some  affinity  with  his 
metaphysical  conclusion  regarding  consciousness. 
And  for  a  doctrine  of  pampsychism  Comte's 
'fictions'  might  take  the  place  of  anticipatory 
;Platonic  myths. 

To    discuss    this  aspect   of  their  thought    is, 

however,  to   take   both    thinkers   on   their  less 

characteristic     side.       The     strength     of    both 

.  positively    was    in    the    ordering    of    scientific 

1  knowledge  from  general  points  of  view,  and  its 

=  direction   to   rationalise  the  life  of  man.      The 

difference  that  goes  with  this  resemblance  may 

perhaps  best  be  put  thus  :   that  Comte  was  not 

more  superior  to  Mill  as  a  system-builder  than 

82 


ASPECTS   OF   LATER  THOUGHT 

Mill  was  to  Comte  as  a  critic,  the  word  'critic* 
being  taken  in  the  widest  sense.  The  observation 
of  Professor  Bain,  though  it  may  not  have  been 
made  with  Comte  in  view  as  the  antithesis  to 
Mill,  seems  here  particularly  apt.  *  A  multitude 
of  small  impressions  may  have  the  accumulated 
effect  of  a  mighty  whole.'  Thus  in  a  summary 
it  is  more  difficult  to  do  justice  to  Mill  than  to 
Comte.  The  essays,  for  example,  collected  in  the 
four  volumes  of  Dissertations  and  Discussions, 
which  cannot  well  be  brought  into  a  short  general 
view,  would  add  more  varied  interest  to  the 
outline  than  Comte's  subsidiary  expositions  of 
his  system,  such  as  the  CatecJtisme  Positiviste  or 
the  Appel  aux  Conservatenrs,  to  which  reference 
has  been  similarly  omitted. 

But  this  is  not  all  that  there  is  to  say.  While 
Comte  was  essentially  a  systematiser,  his  system 
is  at  certain  points  demonstrably  wrong,  not 
merely  from  the  imperfect  knowledge  of  the 
time,  but  from  the  very  nature  of  its  exclusions. 
His  doctrine  is  not  in  conception  at  the  level  of 
Platonism  or  Aristotelianism,  failing  as  it  does  to 
give  any  adequate  consideration  to  '  dialectic ' 
or  '  first  philosophy.'  Doubtless  it  will  be  found 
to  have  less  permanent  aesthetic  value.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  we  refuse  to  be  compelled  to  take 

83 


COMTE  AND   MILL 

it  or  leave  it  as  a  whole,  it  remains  profoundly 
suggestive  both  in  relation  to  science  and  practice. 
The  stimulative  power  that  might  seem  to  belong 
more  naturally  to  the  comparatively  dispersive 
thinking  of  Mill,  with  his  cultivated  openness  of 
mind,  is  now  far  more  present  in  the  rigorous 
dogmatism  of  the  Positive  Philosophy  and  Polity. 
Mill's  miscellaneous  work  was  for  his  own 
generation,  and  contributes  little,  directly  or 
indirectly,  to  solve  newer  problems.  To  complete 
the  antithesis.  Mill,  though  he  has  left  no  system 
of  philosophy,  has  done  a  single  piece  of  work 
that  marks  a  definitive  step  forward  in  human 
thought  such  as  has  not  been  taken  by  any  of 
the  great  systematisers  who  appeared  in  his 
century.  For  Mill's  Inductive  Logic  is  unques- 
tionably a  '  new  organon,'  susceptible  of  common 
use  by  other  minds.  This  cannot  be  said  of 
Hegel's  Logic.  And  Comte,  to  adopt  the  accurate 
distinction  of  his  disciple  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison, 
has  indeed  *  instituted,'  but  he  has  not  'con- 
stituted,' Sociology.  All  that  is  definitive  in  his 
treatment  is  the  discovery  of  the  *  historical 
method,'  which  merely  contributes  one  chapter 
to  Mill's  Logic. 

That  neither  Mill  nor  Comte  was  affected  by 
the  evolutionary  biology  which  had  been  rising 

y  84 


ASPECTS   OF  LATER  THOUGHT 

into  notice  in  Germany  even  before  it  received 
scientific  proof  from  Darwin  or  speculative  de- 
velopment from  Spencer,  does  not  seem  impor- 
tant in  relation  to  the  special  work  of  either. 
So  far  as  the  idea  of  organic  development  had  a 
bearing  on  Comte's  own  work,  he  accepted  it. 
'  Social  evolution '  is  a  phrase  that  he  constantly 
employs,  perhaps  before  any  one  else.  And  the 
rational  problems  that  Mill  attacked  in  his  theory 
of  knowledge  and  in  his  ethics  are  not  really 
solved  by  bringing  in  the  experience  of  the  race 
to  supplement  that  of  the  individual.  The  full 
acceptance  of  biological  evolution  by  Spencer 
before  the  appearance  of  the  Origin  of  Species, 
and  his  cosmical  extension  of  the  idea,  did  not 
enable  him  to  get  rid  of  the  individualism  that 
Comte  had  left  behind  from  the  beginning. 
Thus  his  Sociology  is  in  some  respects  belated 
as  compared  with  Comte's.  His  *  social  organism ' 
is  thought  of  in  biological  terms,  much  like  the 
'  body  politic '  of  Hobbes.  For,  of  course,  the  term 
'  individualism '  is  not  used  here  in  reference  to 
a  theory  of  government.  The  point  is  that 
Commonwealth,  or  the  'social  organism,'  what- 
ever may  be  regarded  as  the  ideal  mode  of  its 
regulation,  is  conceived  only  as  composite  Man, 
and  not  also  as  in  its  social  character  a  condition 

8s 


COMTE  AND   MILL 

prior  to  the  existence  of  its  component  units  as 
human  '  individuals/  Comte,  we  have  seen,  had 
fully  attained  this  latter  conception.  Here  at 
least  no  fault  can  be  found  with  him  from  the 
evolutionary  side.  No  doubt  it  was  inevitable 
that  evolution  should  at  first  seem  to  overshadow 
everything  else;  but  we  can  now  see  that  to 
social  and  political  science  the  distinctively 
evolutionary  thinkers  contributed  less  than  either 
Comte  or  Mill.  It  is  not  in  relation  to  their 
distinctive  work,  but  where  that  reaches  its  limit, 
that  we  shall  find  an  advance  due  to  evolution- 
ary thought. 

The  real  scientific  advance  made  by  Spencer 
on  Comte  is  the  result  not  of  his  evolutionism, 
but  of  his  studies  in  subjective  psychology,  and 
his  consequent  recognition  that  this,  and  not 
biology,  immediately  precedes  the  science  of 
society.  Prior  to  sociology,  it  has  been  allowed, 
the  individual  cannot  be  properly  known;  but 
there  is  a  preliminary  science  of  the  more 
elementary  laws  of  mind,  worked  out  subjectively, 
which  does  for  the  sociologist  what  Comte 
erroneously  attributed  to  cerebral  physiology. 
That  in  psychological  introspection  the  observed 
and  the  observer  are  identical  is  no  doubt  a 
paradox  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  objective 

86 


ASPECTS   OF   LATER  THOUGHT 

sciences;  but  introspection  is  not  therefore  illu- 
sory. Comte's  own  historical  method  is  no  less 
real  because  it  cannot  be  applied  in  biology. 
The  distinctiveness  of  his  insight  into  the  nature 
of  history  is  undeniable ;  but  he  partially  failed 
when  he  came  to  deal  with  the  '  pre-history ' 
that  is  the  more  special  province  of  Spencer  and 
the  anthropologists.  And  his  failure  here  was 
closely  connected  with  his  non-recognition  of  the 
introspective  method.  What  he  missed  was 
precisely  the  '  animism '  which,  according  to 
Tylor  and  Spencer,  was  started  by  primitive 
man  in  order  to  explain  the  peculiarities  of  that 
subjective  consciousness  which  psychologists  re- 
gard as  the  material  of  a  positive  science.  In 
Comte's  view,  as  we  have  seen,  all  the  theologies 
can  be  explained  by  derivation  from  a  primitive 
theory  that  objects  themselves  are  animated. 
The  gods  of  polytheism  being  the  result  of 
generalisation  from  resemblances  between  objects 
of  the  same  class,  a  god  who,  since  he  is  common 
to  all,  can  no  longer  be  localised,  comes  to  be 
thought  of  as  separable  from  any  object  whatso- 
ever. Now  it  cannot  be  absolutely  denied  that 
the  notion  of  a  separable  deity  might  arise  in 
this  fashion.  And,  if  it  did,  subsequent  general- 
isation would  no  doubt  suffice  to  explain  mono- 
87 


COMTE   AND   MILL 

theism  also.  A  more  natural  explanation  of  the 
separability  of  the  god  seems,  however,  to  be 
furnished  by  primitive  animism.  The  notion  of 
a  separable  soul  is  first  evolved  as  an  explanation 
of  the  phenomena  of  life  and  mind  in  man  himself, 
and  then  (according  to  Dr.  Tylor's  form  of  the 
'ghost-theory')  a  similar  soul  is  imaginatively 
projected  into  objects.  The  'ghost-sour  (accord- 
ing to  both  Tylor  and  Spencer)  is  at  first  con- 
ceived as  a  shadowy  semblance  of  the  bodily  form, 
and  is  supposed  to  go  away  and  return  because 
this  hypothesis  seems  required  by  the  alternations 
of  personal  consciousness  and  unconsciousness, 
the  imagery  with  which  the  separable  entity  is 
clothed  being  supplied  by  reflexions,  shadows, 
and  other  accompaniments  of  the  tangible  person. 
Thus  what  is  primitive  is  'animism,'  or  the 
notion  of  a  population  of  separable  spirits.  From 
these,  the  separable  deities  are  derivative,  directly 
or  indirectly.  'Fetishism,'  or  the  notion  that 
there  is  a  soul  in  certain  objects,  is  secondary; 
and  the  idea  of  universally  animated  matter  is 
a  generalisation  out  of  man's  reach  at  the  earliest 
stage.  Now  this  '  ghost- theory,'  since  it  has  been 
founded  on  careful  collation  of  evidence  about 
the  beliefs  of  savages  at  all  stages,  does  not  seem 
likely  to  be  displaced  as  a  whole.    Had  Comte's 

88 


ASPECTS   OF  LATER  THOUGHT 

insight  not  been  defective  in  pure  psychology, 
it  is  probable  that  the  hints  of  *  metaphysical ' 
precursors  like  Hobbes  would  have  suggested 
it  to  him.  As  it  is,  no  shade  of  a  suggestion 
of  it,  so  far  as  I  recollect,  occurs  in  any  of  his 
writings. 

Yet  it  must  be  allowed  that  there  is  a  tendency 
of  late  to  regard  the  strictest  interpretation  of 
the  'ghost-theory'  as  overstrained.  The  notion 
that  the  world  of  objects  is  itself  animated,  some 
modern  theorists  maintain,  was  directly  suggested, 
apart  from  all  ideas  of  ghosts,  by  the  phenomena 
of  moving  things.  To  all  things  that  are  appar- 
ently active,  life  is  directly  ascribed  by  analogy 
with  active  persons.  The  case  is,  perhaps,  one 
where  combination  of  theories  may  be  permis- 
sible. The  ghost-theory  undoubtedly,  and  per- 
haps even  Comte's  derivation  of  all  later  develop- 
ments from  fetishism,  might  with  ingenuity  be 
stretched  to  cover  the  facts;  but  we  have  no 
sound  reason  for  attempting  to  work  exclusively 
either  with  one  or  the  other,  if  there  is  evidence, 
as  there  may  be,  of  independent  origins.  The 
law  called  by  Sir  William  Hamilton  the  '  law  of 
parsimony,'  as  Mill  pointed  out,  is  not  a  law  of 
nature,  but  only  a  methodological  rule.  We  must 
not    invent    hypothetical    causes  where   known 

G  .89 


COMTE  AND   MILL 

causes  suffice  to  explain  the  phenomena;  and, 
if  we  have  to  recur  to  hypotheses,  we  must  not 
multiply  hypothetical  causes  without  necessity; 
but,  when  we  know  of  more  than  one,  or  of  many 
experienced  causal  processes,  we  need  not  dismiss 
a  portion  of  them  for  the  mere  sake  of  simplifying 
our  explanations.  The  processes  of  nature  are 
frequently  complex. 

This  was  fully  recognised  by  Comte,  who  was 
himself  strongly  opposed  to  the  chimerical  uni- 
fications that  are  not  content  with  carrying 
scientific  explanation  into  everything,  but  aim 
at  the  reduction  of  all  laws  to  one.  The  excess 
of  system  here  can  be  redressed  by  his  own 
principles.  It  is  not  the  result  of  too  great  a 
striving  after  speculative  unity,  but  of  a  too 
absorbing  desire  to  unify  human  life.  Neither 
in  Comte  nor  in  Mill  do  we  meet  with  the  barren 
formulae  that  seem  to  explain  everything  while 
actually  explaining  nothing.  Indeed,  the  demand 
for  precision  and  applicability  becomes  on  one 
side  a  defect,  as  limiting  the  speculative  outlook. 
Both  are  too  exclusively  humanist.  Here  is  the 
real  failing  in  their  philosophy  that  might  have 
been  corrected  by  application  of  evolutionary 
theories  with  their  appeal  to  'cosmic  emotion.' 
In  Mill,  as  in  Comte,  there  is  a  theoretical  oppo- 

90 


ASPECTS   OF  LATER   THOUGHT 

sition  of  man  to  the  cosmos  which  seems  to  make 
of  him  a  kind  of  miracle  in  nature.  Evolution 
in  its  larger  aspects  restores  a  wholeness  that 
both  were  sometimes  too  willing  to  renounce. 


91 


SELECTED   WORKS 

MAINLY   BIOGRAPHICAL 

Notice  sur  VCEuvre  et  sur  la  Vie  d' Augusta  Comte.  Par  le 
Docteur  Robinet.     2nd  ed.,  1864. 

Auguste  Comte  et  la  Philosophie  Positive.  Par  E.  Littr^ 
2nd  ed.,  1864. 

Lettres  a  M.  Valat,  1870. 

Testament  d/ Auguste  Comte,  1884. 

The  Positive  Philosophy  of  Auguste  Comte,  Freely  translated 
and  condensed  by  Harriet  Martineau.  With  an  Intro- 
duction by  Frederic  Harrison.    3  vols.,  1896. 

Correspondance  de  John  Stuart  Mill  et  d Auguste  Comte,  avec 
une  Introduction  par  L.  L^vy-Bruhl,  1899. 

J.  S.  Mjll,  Autobiography,  1873. 

Correspondance  inidite  avec  Gustave  dEichthal,  1898. 

John  Stuart  Mill.  A  Criticism  :  with  Personal  Recollections. 
By  Alexander  Bain,  1882. 

Life  of  John  Stuart  Mill.    By  W.  L.  Courtney,  1889. 

The  English  Utilitarians.  By  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  (vol.  iii. : 
John  Stuart  Mill),  1900. 


Printed  by  T.  and  A.  Constablk,  Printers  to  His  Majesty 
at  the  Edinburgh  University  Press 


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